Retrospect
by G.E Waldo
Summary: Summary: A last case, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and tells the final story of House. Set POST whatever Season proves to be the final one. PRIMARY CHARACTER DEATH.
1. Chapter 1

**RETROSPECT**

Part I

By GeeLady

Summary: A last case, a last breath, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and sets things right. (This is not a House's Head/Wilson's Heart related fic', it's something else altogether). Set POST Season 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number proves to be the final season).

!WARNING! _**Primary character death **_- that means, yes, Gregory House! But please try it out anyway. **I know this setting has been done a great deal on TV and in movies - Amadeus, Fried Green Tomatoes, Interview with a Vampire and others - but a cool plot idea came to me and I just have to try it!

Pairing: H/W slash (kinda') & House/other slash (not kinda' and not nice).

Rating: Mature. NC-17. Adult! Language, drug addictions, rape, illness, hurt/comfort. **This is a SAD story. **Again, I warn you **- **PRIMARY CHARACTER DEATH**.**

*This story is also inspired by: **Not With a Bang But With a Whimper** by DIY Sheep (a _**must**_ read!)

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**Have no fear**

**for when I'm alone**

**I'll be better off**

**that i was before**

**I'll take this soul**

**that's inside me now**

**who i was before**

**i cannot recall**

**long nights allow**

**me to feel I'm falling**

**i am falling**

**the lights go out**

**let me feel I'm falling**

**i am falling**

**safely to the ground.**

_**Eddie Vedder**_

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_The place smelled like all such places did - musty. Old people smell: A535, mashed potatoes and green beans every meal, stained sheets and grown-up diapers sitting in urine too long._

_These were the places where the still young and vibrant stashed their parents and grandparents to await their deaths and so fill the place with the smell of that too. _

_Maria McLellan followed the direction she had been given at the front desk by the volunteer receptionist and quickly found her way to the elevators, the fourth floor (where the very old or sick were stored), and room number Nine._

_This is where her project of the week was. Her assignment was to interview, write the article and, she hoped, move onto more interesting human interest stories. _

_The man in the wheelchair who watched her enter the room appeared startled for a moment. He was very old. At least ninety, almost bald and what hair was left, a fringe around the back of his head and tuft atop it, was snow white. It stood erect like wisps of dead grass on a grey and pitted landscape._

_The eyes were old eyes that held her own for a moment. Where hers were soft green and yet in no need of glasses, his were wide, dark eyes frosted over with cataracts that she wondered if he could see through anymore. The bushy eyebrows were white too and met almost in the middle, stray unruly individual hairs rubbed this way and that, too long gone from a mirror._

_But at ninety, it hardly mattered whether he was well groomed or not. _

_To him, though, it did. "I wish they told me you were coming today. I'd have combed my hair at least." In his gravely voice, he sounded genuinely poo-pooed about it. _

_Maria sat in a pink chair worn with many nurses bottoms and looked over her afternoon project. From the fine bone structure to the expressive eyes and wide-set mouth, lips thinned to a near invisible line, she thought he had at one time been a very handsome man. _

_"You're a pretty one." He remarked, checking her once over._

_Maria, red hair flowing to her shoulders and slim figure hidden in a neat black pantsuit, thanked him. "You're Mister Wilson?"_

_"Doctor Wilson."_

_"Sorry."_

_"Eh." He waved away her mistake with a trembling hand. "I haven't doctored anyone for many years. Call me James."_

_"All right James." She took out her recording device and notepad. Some journalists almost never took pen notes anymore, but she liked to. Getting some of the words down in her own hand made them more personal to her. It helped her become involved with the individual in a small way. It was somehow more meaningful than a distant, recorded voice. "Is it okay if I record this?"_

_He nodded amicably. "Sure. Whatever you like."_

_Maria knew almost everything ever written on this particular project. Local story long dead, long ago. No one younger than sixty even knew or cared about it she supposed. But it had piqued her interest because of the controversy surrounding it. The thing that had been lacking in all those old newspaper articles and court transcripts she had read, had been the human element. For this to be real to her, and so to her readers, it had to become real in her mind. And for that she needed to know about the people involved. She needed to see them aside from what the words said._

_This man was the last one alive from those days. And, to her luck, the one she had hoped was still kicking._

_"You knew Gregory House?" Never ask Yes or No questions. Ask questions that invite them to open up and spill._

_"I did." He nodded thoughtfully. "I sure did."_

_"And, you were there through it all?"_

_"Of course I was. That's why you're here today, isn't it?"_

_She smiled. "Yes, but there's so much we don't know about . . . what happened. And about him - I've read that-"_

_"-Do you have a friend sweetie?"_

_She tried to mold her patience to his abruptness. "Sure. A few friends."_

_He dismissed her answer with a huff. "I'm not talking about bar buddies, co-workers or girl's night out at Club Big Dick. I mean, do you have a friend?" He leaned forward just a little, his manner so intense. He wanted a truthful answer. _

_"I mean a soul-mate?" He said. "Another human being that without them in your life, makes you less than half you were. I mean a person who fills everything in you that feels hollow. I'm talking a friend in a billion. Your other self, your counterpart, the one who makes you more real? The one who brings the spark of life to you?" _

_Maria answered truthfully. "No. I've never really had the time."_

_""Never . . . the . . . time.". . . " He repeated her words one by one like they were a foreign tongue. Incomprehensible._

_"Well, make the time, Sweetie."_

_"Can we get back to Doctor House?"_

_"I am! What do you think I've been talking about?" His anger vanished as quickly as it had appeared. "Ever saw a diamond?"_

_Maria decided to play along. It was going to be a long afternoon. "Of course."_

_"Yeah, but only set in gold and sparkling under a glass counter. Nothing you can touch. Nothing that belongs to you. Right? But have you ever seen one close up, right up to your eyeball, like under a microscope? Even an uncut diamond, still in the rough?" He didn't wait for her to answer. "At first glance, seems like a big damn mess. Under a microscope, nothing but flaws in the crystal, discolorations, cracks, hollows, even carbon bits that tell you the thing hadn't stayed long enough in the earth. Needed more cooking."_

_The old doctor James leaned back in his chair and his eyes turned from her to another place where she did not exist. He saw back into the past, to a time and place beyond the room, the pretty girl and his own death looming in the doorway. _

_"But then draw back your eye and look at that same diamond under normal light, with your own senses and your belief in what's good, and those flaws disappear like they weren't ever there in the first place. And you realize," He stretched his palm out to her as though he were displaying the thing itself, "that you hold in your hand one of the most enduring, most wonderful things in this earth and it belongs to you. A diamond - a blue one! A blue diamond, and you can't ever imagine what sights you valued prior to seeing it. Everything else is artificial and dull by comparison. Your life is changed." He settled back in his wheelchair again, as though the monologue had wearied him. _

_" . . . That was my friend." His eyes softened and his voice fell, rolling over with tenderness. "That was Greg House."_

_Maria leaned forward, scribbling a word or two and making sure her recorder was working properly on the little table between them. "What happened to him?"_

_Doctor Wilson drew in a big breath and let it out as though gathering all thoughts and emotions in one place to sort them into an order and form she could understand._

_"There was so much . . . " He began. "I guess I oughta' start with his final case. That awful time is rooted with it. Awful time." James looked around as though something was missing from the room. His eye caught it. "Hand me that, will ya?" _

_Maria's eye followed his pointing finger to a large green ball resting on a shelf and she retrieved it for him._

_He took it carefully, held it, turning it like a trophy or an heirloom. "This was Greg's. He was a hell of an athlete before the infarction wrecked his leg - you know about that?" He looked at her and when she nodded her affirmation he continued._

_"Guess you would. It was mentioned over and over in the damn papers like all he was was the bloody infarction. Like all he ever could be was a cripple."_

_"Or a drug addict?" She suggested, having read much about that as well. _

_"So the hell what?!" He snapped at her. "So the hell what he was an addict? That had nothing to do with what happened to him."_

_Maria was taken aback by that. As far as she had read, it had everything to do with it. "But the court transcripts . . ."_

_"Court-shmort! Lawyers are liars, young woman. Courts and trials are nothing but circuses to obscure the real events and make you believe that what's done is best for justice. Goddamn, I wish I'd had the eyes to see what was being done to my friend. The groove that was being carved for him to be thrown in and dragged along. I could have stopped it, maybe changed it, if I'd just looked a bit harder. Seen passed selfish pride and fear. I'd give everything that came later to go back and do that."_

_"Do what? He was found guilty."_

_"Only he wasn't."_

_Maria leaned in, her curiosity about this man House whom she had never known rising above her irritation at the old man's slowness. _

_"Greg House didn't kill that kid, honey. We did." _

_And then the tiniest words, shaken apart with memory, "And then we killed him."_

XXX

"House. Take the case!" Cuddy had not made it a request and thrust the thick file under Greg House's nose. His blue eyes rolling heavenward, he reluctantly accepted the folder. "How many nephews can one Dean have anyway?" He remarked and left her office.

"Just this one." She answered before the door shut.

-

-

House pushed the conference room door open with his cane and tossed the thick file on the table, letting the papers fan out across half its length. "Jason. Cuddy's nephew. Spoilt brat. Leukemic patient. He presented at three other hospitals with pain, swelling of the joints, stiffness and rash."

His underlings four faces and eight hands tried to gather the notes together and place them back in order.

"Check for childhood arthritis and screen for RH. Do a full blood panel, metal toxicity, common household poisons, infections, and see if the kid is having nightmares or unwelcome wrestling matches with the neighborhood bullies."

Kutner, his thick brows rising above friendly brown eyes, asked, "Why?"

"'Cause there's a new game in town when it comes to pummeling the less statuesque. It's called "Crushing". Kids hold another kid down and squeeze his knee joints until they're too swollen and stiff for him to walk. Ah, the Internet. What would schoolyard meatheads do without it?"

Foreman. "Cuddy's nephew huh? The kid's been sick with leukemia for," Foreman read the chart, "three years and you want us to start poking around in his already ravaged body. Aren't you worried we might blow it?"

House poured a cup of coffee. "Nope. I'm not worried I'll blow it. And if _you_ blow it, I'm in the clear."

Cameron and Chase exchanged looks. She turned to look back at House over her shoulder. "Joint swelling is common for cancer patients. The treatment causes strong immune reactions. So you must already suspect something else." Cameron had been back working with House for just under a year. Emergency had wrung her dry and being back in Diagnostics was actually restful by comparison. Moreover working again under House was every bit as interesting as it had ever been. So was House.

"Probably virus. He's got Diarrhea so maybe an exotic one. This kid's parents have been all over the place with this kid." House said, sipping his coffee. Ever since Kutner had perfected his coffee mix, House forbade anyone else from brewing a pot as long as Kutner was somewhere in the hospital.

Kutner was pleased that he could please House. It was such a rare accomplishment. "Breakbone fever?" He wondered.

"Dunno'" House answered. "Go check out his bones."

His four underlings vacated the room and House took his coffee to his office, desiring a few tunes and moments of peace. His leg had other ideas and at the last minute he turned on his heel and headed for Wilson's office.

Wilson was in the middle of putting on his coat.

"Where're you going?" House asked as he entered and sat down in the chair opposite Wilson's very neat and clean desk.

"Thought I'd go out for lunch today."

"Alone?" Wife number four was away on a tropical holiday with her sister. Wilson didn't seem worried that they had not wanted him along.

"Sure. Unless you wan to-?"

"Absolutely." House thrust a small orange vial out to his friend and prescriber. "Right after a fill-up."

Wilson sighed, walked to his desk, dug his prescription pad out of his top drawer and scribbled out the usual.

House was given a good close up view of his friends' dark hair. "I believe you're finally getting some grey."

Wilson ripped off the 'script and handed it to House. "Knowledge that my best friend's liver soon is going to announce "That's it, Buddy - Sayonara!" will do that to his prescribing doctor."

"My liver and I have an understanding. If I die, he dies!"

Wilson frowned. He hated House's never-may-care attitude toward his own health. He hated it even more when the man spoke of his own death so casually. House at fifty-one was ten years his senior and had been popping Vicodin for nearly fifteen years. Often with whisky chasers on and off duty. House's dying was something he didn't like to think about too much.

"Where're we going for lunch?"

"Mario's."

"Lasagna and garlic toast. Special occasion?"

Wilson smiled at him, indulging himself in House's youth-like enthusiasm. Some things about the man would never change. He hoped. "None at all."

After a very good lunch, they returned to the hospital and finished their shifts with their respective patients. Wilson with his nine he had scheduled for that afternoon, and House with his one.

-

-

The second differential was underway. "Our leukemia kid developed his watery Diarrhea three days ago. Usual treatments ineffective."

Foreman read from the patients file. "Chemo' from two years ago was eighty percent effective. Leukemia returned. Blood transfusions every four days . . . " He looked up at House. "Why do we have this case again? Shouldn't this be sitting on Wilsons desk?"

House stared at the white board. "It should be but it isn't." He said.

"You stole it from Wilson?" Cameron asked.

"It's not stealing if he never knew about it to begin with. I convinced Cuddy to give it to me. Wilson is an innocent."

Foreman clarified House's information for the rest of the team. "Cuddy _made_ him take it."

"No." House said. "Cuddy _thinks_ she made me take it. I'm stockpiling favors for later."

Cameron dived in. "Allergy to food. Scratch test."

"Done. Negative."

"Sensitivity to certain foods." Taub offered. "Dairy, wheat, fish, citrus, beef . . .?"

"All common sensitivities. None that apply here." House turned around to face them. "This kid's been to three hospitals and four different specialists who tested the boring stuff already. That's why he's here now. So read the damn file before _every_ one of you suggests things that have already been ruled out."

"He's been here half a day." Chase said.

"But _you've_ been here five years. Now I've just told you to disregard the obvious boring crap. If it was _obvious_, the kid would be treated and at home playing with his Wii or maybe a gaming system. Here - maybe this'll help." House turned to the white board and wrote out a new symptom - "GAS".

"He's burping a lot?" Kutner asked.

"No. He's got gas. Just started yesterday."

"Bloating in the intestines could be an allergy." Foreman said then, when he saw House's face, added "It might be an allergy to an added ingredient in his diet. I'm assuming he's on a macrobiotic diet?"

House looked at the board. "Finally! An idea. Yes, he's on the physical, spiritual and planetary health _cancer_ diet. I know there's something wrong in that idea. Oh yeah! It's idiotic."

Chase did a quick run down for those in the room perhaps not in the know. Chase had found out his dad, Rowan, had been on the diet for some time before dying of stage four lung cancer. "Whole grains, rice, heavy on the vegetables . . . all gas inducing."

"And not to mention but I will." House added. "Macrobiotic diets are top heavy for soy products which several world Cancer Councils think is bad for cancer patients. But what do a bunch of world renowned _researchers _know anyway?"

"He's been off all of that since being hospitalized here. Liquids only."

"And he still has bloating. Interesting, hmmmm?" House looked at them. He knew he probably didn't have to tell them what tests to run next but he voiced them regardless. "The kid's treatments have circled the continent at least once this year. Make sure he doesn't have Traveler's Diarrhea, and even though he's a kid and not a middle aged woman, check for Collagenous Colitis. Cut into the mucosa and get me a sample of the of protein collagen from the second epithelial layer."

-

-

-

-

-

"New case?" Wilson asked as House joined him in the hospital cafeteria. Wilson was seated at a table by the window. Long beams of yellow sun warmed their bodies.

"Yup. Cuddy insisted."

"The leukemia kid?"

House stopped chewing his ham sandwich.

Wilson caught the look. "Thieves tales travel fast." He cut into his chicken patty. "It's probably a secondary infection or even a reaction from the transfusions. The more he has, the more likely that is. You know that Mister "Taint My Veins and See What Happens"."

"It's not an infection. No fever. In fact, his temperature is below average."

"If he just had a transfusion, that also is a common reaction."

"He hadn't had a transfusion in the four days before he was here and I've suspended them since then."

Wilson chewed. The chicken was luke warm and the gravy was over salted. "That's not a good idea, House."

"Regularly introducing foreign bodies into his system while we still don't know what's wrong with him could cloud the tests and delay a diagnosis."

"Those foreign bodies are screened, sterilized and harmless. Other than the fact that they keep him alive. You can't diagnose a dead kid. He has _gas_."

House dropped his sandwich and picked at his cole slaw. "It's more than gas. There's no reason for his body to be producing it. He hasn't eaten real food for nearly a week."

"How are his B.M's?"

House raised his eyebrows at Wilson's code talk. "It is okay to say bowel movement. We _are _doctors and this _is_ a hospital."

"There are people eating in here."

"Most of them are doctors too. Some are even nurses and believe me, shit is one thing nurses know a lot about."

Wilson pushed his plate away. "Why must our conversations turn to bodily functions only when I'm eating?"

"I like to be consistent." House snatched Wilson's abandoned chicken. "And I'm hungry."

"If you need help with this kid, my door is open." Wilson gathered his tray. "And you owe me a lunch."

-

-

House returned to his conference room to find a member of his team back already. Using the black marker Kutner had added something to the white board. He was now drawing a line through "COLLAGENOUS COLITIS" and "PROTEIN MARKER".

House snatched the stylus from his hand. "If I've told you kids once, I've told you a thousand times - no one touches the marker or the board but daddy! Now you've set a bad example for the other children." But House read the word Kutner had added.

""TYPHLITIS"." House nodded. "Rare leukemic transfusion complication. The kid hasn't _had_ any transfusions for nearly a week but still . . .could be delay due to restricted nutrients, even his low temp'. Typically it would present with fever."

"But his temperature has been low since he arrived." Kutner suggested. "He might simply have a naturally low set body temperature . . ."

"If we check it now and find it elevated - within normal - then for him he has a fever." House nodded. "Do a culture for C. difficile. If it's positive, pop in a new nasogastric tube and start him on metronidazole. Go."

XXX

_"That was the turning point in the case." _

_Maria watched the old doctor's eyes turn inward as he recalled the tiny details that the papers never mentioned. Tight, hard "bleeding" news is what the papers liked to print. Things that sold. Sad stories were only printed if they happened to widows & orphans, lost kittens or wounded soldiers home from a war. Famous doctors turned sour received no leniency._

_Old Doctor Wilson stared passed her, melancholic with images still crowding so much of his memory. "That's when everything began to go wrong."_

XXX

Wilson encouraged wife number four - Ginger - to invite House for dinner.

The two had never mixed company for more than fifteen minutes as six months previous Wilson and Ginger had flown to Las Vegas for a one, two wedding and a three, four honeymoon. During the flight home, Wilson had phoned House with the nuptial news.

"Ginger? _Ginger_?? You expect me to believe that's her real name?"

Wilson assured him it was and that she was very sweet and crazy about him.

"Am I supposed to guess whether that feeling is mutual?"

"Don't be jealous, House. You know you're the only cantankerous, drug-addicted jerk for me."

"Congratulations are in order. Also, I just faxed your name and number to a very good divorce lawyer. He'll be calling you in a year or so."

"Hilarious. We'll be landing in thirty minutes. Shall I call a cab or are you going to resemble a friend and pick us up? You can make it our wedding gift."

"I'll be there."

Ginger turned out to be five-foot-nothing of tongue curling saccharine and House had barely made it home with his Wilson friendship intact.

Ginger had not been so accommodating to her husbands friend since that night. "He's "disabled" all right!" had been her summation of House.

"House is lonely. He's a pain but he's my best friend. And he's got a big case right now. I just want him to have a nice evening with people instead or porn for a change."

Ginger ran delicate fingers through her auburn dyed hair and adjusted a bright orange evening dress that was much too tight for her ample hips. An ill-suffering sigh, "Fa-hine." She stuck a finger in the center of his chest, making him wince. "But if he makes so much as one joke about my height, he's gone."

Ginger wasn't sweet and kind when House was on her mind, Wilson mused. Strung tighter than a fiddle was more like it.

Wilson answered the door. House had put on a fresh shirt and one of his nicer jackets. He was trying at least.

Wilson saw the bottle in his left hand. "And you brought wine!" Wilson stood back. "Are you sure you have the correct address, Stranger?"

House shoved passed Wilson's smart-ass grin. "Get out of the w-a-a-y."

Dinner went unexpectedly well. House didn't refrain from jokes about Ginger's height or backside but he was cooperative enough not to say them when she was in the room.

House sipped his third glass of dark grape.

"How was the roast?" Ginger asked the men.

House, glancing at Ginger's retreating back end, said over the table to Wilson. "The rump roast was just fine." And when Ginger had disappeared into the kitchen. "And the roasted cow-ass wasn't too bad either."

Wilson almost choked on his own drink. "House!" He whispered fiercely but had to stifle his own chuckle. She really did have a substantial ass for such a tiny person. But did she ever use it well in the sack.

"I've never met someone who was fifty-five percent backside before." House continued, ignoring Wilson's warning to shut-up. Ginger would probably appear any second. "God's ass bin must have been cleaned out."

Wilson toppled forward on the table, laughing himself silly and mostly because he'd exceeded House's alcohol consumption by nearly two times. "Which ass bin?" Wilson managed to choke out. "The extra-large or the "_holy shit!"_?"

House nearly fell off his chair. The wine was doing its assigned work and the two men were rapidly morphing into pajama-night girls.

Wilson put a drunken finger to his red-stained lips. "Shsh-sh-sh. . . " But he couldn't help himself. He turned deadly serious and gave House the palms out signal that he had something to say. "House. This is serious now. We had to apply for a _zip-code_."

House stood up on three wobbly legs and threw an arm around Wilson's shoulder. "Come on, let's take a walk around your trimmed, stereotypical urban back yard."

Ginger returned carrying bowls of Carmel swirl only to find her husband and his inebriated friend staggering out the livingroom sliding doors onto the ground level deck. "Hey. Pudding." She said to their weaving backs and tangle of arms.

"No thanks, honey-muffins." Wilson said. "I 'ass had enough." He giggled at his own joke.

House sat down on one of three deck chairs placed around a small table on the deck. "Thanks for the wine." Wilson said.

House drained the last drops into his glass. "Kind of a wedding gift. You know to Christian the good ship Ginger."

Wilson snortled a few more chuckles but he was getting sleepy now. "She's a peach."

"Two even." House's pager beeped at him. He squinted to read it in the dim light. "Perfect." He sobered a little, enough to sort his mind out and start thinking like a doctor again, instead of the newlyweds' drunken friend. "I gotta' go back to work."

"I'll tell Ginger to call you a cab."

XXX 

_"He went to work drunk?"_

_"Figured that be the first thing you'd ask. Why does everybody think doctors don't have lives outside their work?" He tilted his head in a kind of shrug. "I admit, House hardly ever did anything outside of work, but even he needed time away. A few laughs. That's all I tried to give him. House was fun. To me, he was. I had more fun with him than my wives or my brothers. Even if the fun was far between the fights and the troubles."_

_"What happened?"_

_The old doctor rubbed the top of his head. "Things happened. Decisions happened. Some wrong and some right. House happened mostly."_

_Maria waited for him to explain. Doctor Wilson seemed far more willing to tell the little known details if she didn't push him._

_"Houses' patient, the leukemia kid, was getting worse. The parents were frantic. Cuddy was beside herself. The parents were rich. Very rich. Donated trunks full of money to the hospital every year." He took a moment and cleared his throat. "Damn oxygen makes the throat dry. Body responds by creating twice the mucus."_

_A bit of doctor talk, Maria smiled. "You said the kid was getting worse? How did House fix it?"_

_"He didn't, since you asked. But he sure as hell tried." Doctor Wilson took out a tissue and wiped his post-nasal drip away. "He tried everything. Him and his team. I even tried, but it wasn't my case."_

_Wilson sat up straighter. His wheelchair needed some more padding. One pillow wasn't enough anymore. "The kid got worse. Diarrhea, bloating, and now blood in his bowels. Yet the leukemia had been under control not two months before. He had received a regime of transfusions. New stuff. Radical RNAi gene therapy with promising results. A batch was delivered via the blood and in it went, switching off certain genes, sometimes turns others on. But this one was designed to switch off the mutated gene on chromosone sixteen, responsible for some types of myeloid leukemia. _

_"The treatment appeared to be working well until the kid was sent to us. Fact is, he had been deteriorating for the previous week, but his own physician thought it was a simple transfusion reaction. Nothing to worry about."_

_Maria tied to keep straight in her head Doctor Wilsons medical jargon. "But it wasn't a transfusion reaction."_

_"Nope. As Doctor House used to say - If the patient dies, the diagnosis was wrong and it was something else. The "it" being the disease of course." He took a few deep breaths._

_"Do you want to rest? I can come back." Maria really hoped he didn't need to. She wanted this down and done today so she could type it up over the weekend. Besides, it was getting interesting._

_"No. I might be dead by tomorrow. Um, . . . oh yes. The kid was getting worse . . ."_

XXX

Cuddy met House by the clinic. "His parents are beside themselves."

"Pretty neat trick."

"No jokes. They've been here all night and want to know where their sons doctor is."

Cuddy saw the parents coming down the hall, evidently on their way to her office. "Try for God's sake to be professional." Suddenly cuddy leaned in and sniffed House. "Have you been drinking?" She asked. Then, horrified, "Are you _drunk?"_

"I was drinking. Now I'm working."

A tall silver and grey haired business man type demanded of Cuddy and House. "What is wrong with our son?" His pale faced wife with the perfectly sculpted hair and two hundred dollar manicure trailed behind him.

House threw Cuddy nod. "I'll be in my office."

Cuddy stopped him with hand on his sleeve and whispered fiercely into his ear "You are _not_ leaving me alone with this." Then addressed the distressed parents. "Mister and Misses Parks, this is Doctor House. Your sons doctor."

The husband just turned his body slightly to address the same question to House. "What is _wrong_ with our son!?"

"He's _sick_." House said. "If you'll excuse me, I'd like to go-"

But the wife stepped in front of him. "He is our only child and you are his doctor. Tell us what's wrong with him."

"I don't _know_." He almost yelled in her face. "I have no idea what's wrong with him." His head was beginning to pound from the wine, the hurried cab ride, the walk into the hospital from the parking lot on his already sore leg that he had been dragging around all day and evening, and the pungent waft of her expensive French perfume. "What I do know is he's bleeding from bowels that are barely working. I know he has leukemia and I also know that if you will stop delaying me with useless questions, I can get my team together and try to _find out_ what's wrong with him."

House limped away as fast as possible, leaving Cuddy to deal with the consequences of his bluntness.

Misses Parks turned to Cuddy. "Did he have alcohol on his breath?"

Cuddy smiled and took her arm, leading her into her quiet office. "Doctor House was reluctantly attending a small wedding this evening." She bald-faced lied. "He had to make an obligatory toast. But he will be here all night and for as long as it takes to help your son. He's our _best _doctor."

XXX

_Doctor Wilson stopped speaking for a moment. He was looking at the wall. Maria followed his gaze to a cheap picture of a motorcycle that looked like it had been taken from a calendar. There was a few paperback books piled on a small shelf screwed into the wall at wheelchair level and an old purple vase with a lid. A gift from one of his grandchildren no doubt. _

_"How many grandchildren do you have Doctor Wilson?"_

_He started and lifted his eyes back to her. "Don't. Never had any kids."_

_Maria had never met anyone so old who did not. Not even one child. It was unusual. "How many times were you married?"_

_"Six. Wonderful women, all of them. In their own way."_

_But not a single kid from any. Not even by accident. She wondered if it was he who hadn't wanted children, or the women who hadn't wanted children with him? Or was there some other reason?_

_"I wish I had taken that case." Old Doctor Wilson said suddenly._

_"Oh?"_

_"Yes. I should have insisted. I should have fought Cuddy about it."_

_"Cuddy was your boss?"_

_"Lisa Cuddy. Oh!" He smiled a devilish grin, yellowed teeth showing such delight, Maria was shocked at the years it took off him. Well, not took the years off, just transformed him into a younger, happier soul. Wilson really must have been a very handsome man in his younger years. _

_"Lisa Cuddy was beautiful. Smart too. Ran that hospital like an army barracks. But not a hard noser. No. She had a really soft spot for House. She'd known him a long time, you see. A long time. Longer than me. And I think they may have been more than friends once upon a time, but I was never positive about that. The way he looked at her sometimes . . ."_

_"You mean with love?"_

_"Mmm, more like lust. House was not subtle. Funny thing though, he was a romantic."_

_"Hard to put lustful and romantic together on the same page."_

_"House could." Wilson chuckled to himself. "I may have been married six times but he was a heart breaker in his own way you know. Half the women in the nurses lounge wanted to try him. But none of them dared. Hard to get passed that scowl."_

_Maria wanted to get back to the main topic. "You mentioned you wished you had taken that case."_

_"Yeah. I should have. The kid had cancer. It was my specialty."_

_"Do you think you would have saved him?"_

_"Hell no. The kid would have died. But House, . . . but my friend wouldn't have. Greg would have lived."_

_The doctor took out his dingy pocket hanky and wiped at his eyes. This time Maria was moved to see he was wiping tears away before they had a chance to fall. _

_"He must have meant a lot to you."_

_"Gregory House was integral to me. He was my courage. The marrow of my life. To truly appreciate what he was, I had to lose him."_

_Doctor Wilson wiped at his eyes again. "Sorry, dear. Hard to talk about him sometimes. I get all blubbery. He hated that. If he were here, he'd call me a simpering idiot."_

_"He doesn't sound like . . . "marrow"." More like jerk. _

_"Sweetie, if he walked in that door right now and called me moron, it'd be music to my ears."_

_He smiled again, a full set of stained teeth, and Maria was granted a peek into what this House must have been like - to bring such delight to an old man forty years later just from a single memory._

_"I loved him." _

XXX

Part II ASAP


	2. Chapter 2

RETROSPECT

Part II

By GeeLady

Summary: A last case, a last breath, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and sets things right. (This is not a House's Head/Wilson's Heart related fic', it's something else altogether). Set POST Season 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number proves to be the final season).

Pairing: H/W slash implied.

Rating: Mature. Language.

WARNING! Primary character death - that means, yes, Gregory House! But please try it out anyway.

Note: Some of the medical terminology and situations are _**made up. **_Some of this story is set five years from now and some forty years from now, so I'm allowing myself the space to be creative in what I think might _someday_ be.

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_"They put on a wonderful lunch here." Old Doctor Wilson said, happily chewing on some very soft french fries. He wore dentures but they were loose and his upper plate kept falling down to his lower, exposing paper-thin, pale gums._

_Maria had declined the lunch the volunteer orderly in pink had offered when she saw Doctor Wilson had a visitor. Maria did accept a cup of coffee._

_"You're too thin." James told her. "Men don't like that. Gotta have some meat on you." He gestured to her bemused smiled. "Can't get a grip when a woman's that thin. Cut themselves or something." He chuckled, pleased with his own humor._

_Marias' only thought was: Men never change. "Can we talk about Doctor House while you eat?"_

_He nodded, cutting into his crumb-coated pork chop. "House loved fast food. Chinese mostly."_

_Hoping to steer the conversation back to more relevant and story-worthy details "What did they feed him in prison?"_

_"Don't know. He never let me visit him there." Wilson dropped his fork, a trifle irked that she had reminded him of the year and a half he had not seen his friend while he was serving time. "He got out early for good behavior." He remarked, letting his mind go back again to those lost days and away from the cooling food on his plate._

_"Only place a man like Gregory House could be controlled was a prison. A cage wall-papered with rules. So many rules it was like a second prison inside the first one. It must have been very hard on him." Doctor Wilson pushed his tray away and Maria helped him move the tea-table on wheels to one side. "But Greg must have done what they told him and said Yes, sir enough because he was out in a year and a half. _

_"There was only one rule they couldn't make him obey."_

_"What was that?"_

_"Rehabilitate. Get clean. Become an upstanding citizen again. Believe in Christmas and salute the flag." He spat out the bitter words. "Funny damn philosophy to stick an innocent man in with a bunch of hardened criminals where the guards hated him and the only ones who treated him as one of their own were the damn criminals so they were all he had to learn from." _

_He took a few revitalizing deep breaths after such a long sentence. "Now it's Two strikes and you're out with the prisons more crowded than ever."_

_"What else can we do? Times are hard, people fall into crime . . ." Maria shrugged her shoulders. She was just one woman._

_"I know, I know. Tough times. This is the fifth "tough times" I've lived through since I learned to add."_

_Maria wanted to keep him from getting too emotional over his opinions of the criminal justice system and more how it affected Doctor House. "How did Greg fare in prison?"_

_"As I expected he would - badly. Oh he followed the rules as I said, but somewhere along the line, I guess when his leg got to be too painful or he got too lonely, someone in there introduced him to "Gun" and he took it."_

_"Heroin?"_

_Wilson nodded. "Um huh. But not you run-of-the-mill variety. This was the type that no amount of chemical rehab' could touch. This, . . .this kind of heroin was a thing you didn't come back from."_

_"I've heard of it. We took it in school as part of Social Studies of the Street Class."_

_"Street Class?? Is that what they call people who sleep in cardboard boxes now? Must be a college word coined to make it sound like they prefer them. Soft mattresses too unhealthy for their everyday man backs."_

_Doctor Wilson was a man of strong opinions. She seemed to have offended him. _

_He saw her look. "Don't worry, I'm not mad at you. Where was I? The Gun, yes." He looked at her sharply. "You said you've heard of it but do you know what it does?"_

_"No. It's illegal as hell. I've only read of it. Anyone caught possessing, selling, carrying or manufacturing it gets a life term. No parole. Most of the United National Council adopted the Substances of Extreme Health Hazard Bill in 2017. Gun was banned."_

_"Not soon enough." _

_"Did he die of it?"_

_"No. You can't die of Gun -well - not really. It kills you just the same though."_

_"What happened to Gregory after he got out?" She used the dead man's full first name in hopes of getting Doctor Wilson to lighten up a bit and talk more about the man himself. _

_"He called me. One day he just called me up from jail and asked for a ride from the penitentiary back to New Jersey."_

_"How did he seem?"_

_"Like a man beaten up from the inside-out." _

XXX

"House. Come stay with me." Wilson tried to keep his eyes on the highway before him but he wanted to look at his friend.

And he didn't want to look.

House looked terrible. Greyer, thinner, blank of face. No spark in his eyes or manner. He was a man with his head down from too many blows.

House shook his head no. Wilson noted Houses' left hand clenched in a tight fist in his lap while his right constantly massaged his thigh.

Wilson felt desperate. He wanted to help him somehow, keep him safe, show him everything was going to be okay and introduce him to the world again. Wilson wanted House to spring back to life and hoped to arrange that he get back some part of his old existence.

"I've got plenty of room. Roxanne knows you're coming. We've got a second master bedroom. It's yours. You'll have your own bathroom. All the privacy you need."

But House just looked out the passenger window and shook his head again.

Wilson approached the center of town. Princeton was dark. It was after ten PM and the weather was chilly. Late October had brought wet daytime rain and frozen streets at night.

"You can just drop me here." House said.

Wilson was shocked. It was the worst area of town with just a few involved downtown streets but those crowded with crime, drugs and violence. "_Here_?"

House nodded and grabbed the car door handle, actually cracking it open a bit as thought to leap out while the car was still moving. Wilson was afraid in fact that he might fall out and get run over by his back tires so he reluctantly but rapidly pulled up to a curb. "House. _Please_ don't go?"

Wilson reached out his hand and placed it gently on Houses' left forearm. "Please."

For the first time since getting in the car, House looked straight at him. "I can't."

Wilson thought he might stop breathing. His chest felt tight with fear that he might never see him again. Just like his brother. "I don't want to lose you again. I don't want to watch you disappear. - _Why _won't you stay?"

House sighed.

Wilson was left with the feeling that House had so much to tell him but nothing he would be proud to say. "I'm already gone Jimmy."House eased himself to his feet in his untied sneakers, preparing to walk away. "I'm sorry."

"House!" Wilson fumbled in his wallet, his eyes watering. "Here." He gave him all the cash he had along with his business card. On the back he scribbled his cellular number. "With that number you can reached me _anytime,_ _anywhere. _It'll connect you tomy home, cell', computer or car. If you need anything at all _- anything_ - please call me."

House stared for a few seconds. Wilson couldn't place the expression on his face. He was like a man presented with something potentially poisonous but too hungry not to accept. House took the bills, stuffing them into his overcoat pocket and slid the business card into his threadbare prison issue blue pants. The seam down the side was ripped and the weave had begun to fray.

Wilson wanted to jump out of his car, throw his arms around him and make him stay. Somehow help him see it was the better choice. Wilson wanted to plead, beg, - promise him anything at all if he would just stay.

House nodded. "Thanks." His tired eyes were gentle for Wilson - thankful for his old friend who had missed him.

XXX

_"Then he was gone." Old Doc Wilson said._

_"You must have seen him again?"_

_"Yes. Not for a long time though. I went looking for him. I couldn't leave it like that." He looked at her, his eyes suddenly alight with determination as though it was today - __**this **__day that was then and he was about to embark on his quest to find Gregory House and help him. Save him. Bring him home. _

_"I had to find him. I __**had**__ to."_

XXX

Wilson had no idea where to start looking for House but one lost soul in a city of forty thousand people - it shouldn't be that hard. At least it wasn't New York. But he hadn't seen his brother in eighteen years either. If a person didn't want to be found . . .

Wilson began simply by driving a different route to and from work each day. Sometimes he would take a long detour, often through the area where he had last seen House limp away from his car the day after his parole.

On most weekends he would cruise through that area watching for a tall man with a decided limp. Anyone with a dark overcoat or cane would cause him to look twice, three times, often circle the block again, in the hope that it might be House.

It never was.

Wilson called up everyone he had ever done a favor for and recruited their eyes with the same short speech. "Just please keep an eye open. If you see him, call me right away. _It's important_."

He also asked every friend or professional acquaintance who worked Emergency or Clinic Admittance at every hospital in the greater area to call him if Gregory House walked in, either on a stretcher or on a cane, seeking medical help or a pain prescription.

No one called.

Months went by and House, though ever on his mind, took a back seat to his increasing workload and his own neglected personal life. He was now four times divorced and the echo in his two bedroom apartment was getting louder every day.

One day, a miracle day where House had not been on his mind all morning, a batch of beaten up bloody locals were hauled in, some in hand cuffs, to have their wounds treated before being taken to the Remand Center where the recently arrested were incarcerated to await charges, to make arrangements for bail, or to await their arraignment.

Local Narcotics had made one of their frequent raids on a well-known drug den. A group of sixty or so men and women, all users or abusers, had gotten into a scuffle with some unwelcome party crashers and the resulting brawl had left many with facial cuts, head wounds, general contusions and a few slightly more serious injuries. One man had been stabbed.

Half the arrested, those with minor cuts or bruises, were escorted to a nearby medical clinic, the more seriously injured were sent to Plainsborough Hospital's free clinic where Wilson had volunteered to temporarily ease the unexpected load on the already overcrowded clinic.

After a fifteen hour shift herself, Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine, had left the small emergency in Doctor Wilsons' good hands and gone home for the day.

Wilson entered the small exam room without even glancing at this next faceless junkie whose chart said simple "G.H." and that he had facial cuts and a possibly cracked mandible.

"Okay, Mister G.H." Wilson said, hooking the little ear pieces of his stethoscope into his ears and turning to his nineteenth patient in three hours. "Let's see that jaw of yo-"

Wilson stopped. The man was looking at him. Nestled in the haggard whites shot through with red stared strikingly blue irises. The face was thin and pasty. The hair unkempt and the cheeks shadowed with a weeks growth of salt and pepper.

Wilson almost stopped breathing. "House." He said, so quietly he hardly heard it himself. "My God . . ."

Perched on the exam table, Gregory House stared without answering. He knew who he was, Wilson was sure of that. But . . .

Wilson stepped closer. Houses' pupils were dilated. He was high or had recently been. And he was just out of it enough to not have noticed what hospital he had been brought to. Wilson swallowed at the handcuffs around Houses' wrists.

After nearly a year of searching for him, now that House was not three feet from him, he had no idea what to say or do. Wilson had memorized a "please come home" speech for the day he would find House. Now that House had found him, he had nothing to say but, "Let's see that jaw."

Wilsons' hands shook a little as he very gently manipulated Houses rough jaw, moving it up and down, and back and forth as it would go, checking for unusual swelling or deep purple bleeding under the skin. It was swollen but nothing to indicate a break.

But Wilson did not want House to be taken away just yet. "Hmm." He said. "That could be a hairline fracture. We'll need an x-ray."

House just nodded. Wilson knew by how House kept his eyes focused on Wilsons that he knew Wilson was lying. House had been a doctor once, too. He would know whether his jaw was broken or just bruised. House didn't say anything though as Wilson asked the night nurse to arrange a time, but also reported to the officer waiting to haul House to overnight lock-up that House would have to stay here the night.

"We have an infirmary downtown." The officer said, bored and tired. His shift was over and he wanted to get these last few junkies to lockup and go home.

"Does it have an MRI?" Wilson asked, using his educated physicians voice so there would be no argument. "Because I think this mans jaw is broken and if the x-ray doesn't show it clearly enough for the attending, we'll need to do an MR image." Wilson was the attending and an MRI would be a waste of time and money. X-rays are the standard for diagnosing broken bones, but he wasn't going to tell the cop that. Counting on the officer having limited knowledge about medicine, Wilson looked at him with an impatient face.

"Well, there has to be a guard on the door."

"We have security here. Tell the nurse who it is he has to call in the morning - is that you? - when, or if, the guy's ready to be discharged." Wilson rattled off and returned to the exam room.

House had not moved an inch.

Wilson hurried to the supply drawer and pulled out a vacutainer needle and holder, a tourniquet, a pre-moistened sterile alcohol swab and rubber gloves. "I'll need a blood sample." He said and House rolled up his sleeve without being asked.

Wilson almost fainted when he saw the marks. The inside of Houses left arm was covered in needle tracks. Long use tracks. There were enough old injection sites and enough newer ones to indicate he was not a lifer but he was more than a novice. Dozens upon dozens of tiny footprints telling Wilson exactly where House had been traveling. At least two years worth of bad mileage. "_Jesus_." Wilson sat in the stool next to him. "Jesus, House."

It was not said in accusation or righteous repugnance. It was said because Wilson discovering this about his friend was almost too much to comprehend. His heart broke for House. Broke and came back together again and then broke again.

How could he help him? What steps does one take to repair this much damage to a ruined life? Wilson looked at him, his face crumpled with the terrible revelation that House was not just a junkie but a needle junkie. A hype'.

Wilson made himself perform the blood aspiration and labeled the sample to be sent to the lab. On the form he wrote that the results be returned only and specifically to the Oncology Department Head.

Wilson sat quietly with House. He had no idea what to say or what to do next. "You can stay here tonight. I'll be sure to get you a private room." He scratched his forehead with his still gloved thumb. "And we'll, uh, we'll get that jaw x-rayed." Wilson cleared his throat.

House only nodded. If he felt shame over the marks, exhaustion had obviously stymied it.

Wilson saw House rub at his thigh. "Are you? - do you need Vicodin? Are you o-on something stronger now?"

"I'm okay." It was the first word he had said and it came out tired and flat. Emotions were in short order for House and overflowing for Wilson. "All right." Wilson stood. "Um. I'll go arrange a room and . . . tell security-" He hated like hell that he had to inform a rent-a-cop to keep his eye and gun trained on House for the night. It wasn't right. "-um, tell security that-" Wilson knew his voice was high and tight with anger and sorrow about it. About everything.

"Wilson - "

It was the first time he had heard his name from Houses' mouth for two years.

A tiny glow had remained his far away eyes for his friend. " - It's okay."

XXX

_Maria found herself sinking deeper and deeper into Doctor Wilson's narrative about the man he called best friend. The story was a sad one. Doctor Wilson brought his thoughts back to the present. _

_"Did he go back to jail?"_

_"No, no. I sat with him in his room all night and made sure he slept. He didn't eat the meal I ordered up for him but went right to sleep. He slept like the dead, like he hadn't closed his eyes for weeks. Maybe he hadn't." Old Doc' sighed heavily. "Next morning I woke up in the chair and his bed was empty. He was gone. I made a few calls and finally got a hold of the arresting officer. He gave the name of a pool attorney who handled Houses' case. He was charged with a misdemeanor, spent a night in jail and was fined. The Judge also ordered him to perform fifty hours of community service which naturally, House did not perform."_

_"How long before you saw him again?"_

_"Six, seven months."_

_Maria wanted to know something. "We've gotten off track a little. My fault. Um, . . you said that House never killed the kid. That you did, or you and the hospital did. How do you mean?"_

_Doc' Wilson rubbed the wisps of hair on his head and blew out a hard breath. "We'd better order some more coffee."_

-

-

_Doc' Wilson smacked his lips at the steaming beverage. Roma, his favorite volunteer, a round pretty twenty-something with long dark hair, always made sure he had lots of sugar for his coffee. It wasn't on his designated diet allowance, but she had a soft spot for James and did what she could to make his time left on earth more pleasant._

_Doc' gestured to Roma when she came in with a tray with coffee and even a few cake donuts. "There's my girl."_

_Maria was tickled to see the wide smile on Doc's face. And shocked to see the leer it turned into. Doc' was a masher! In his younger days, he must have been quite a ladies man._

_"Roma's my angel in disguise." Doc' said as Roma smiled at him and then left them alone. Roma liked doing things for the old Doc'. He was ninety. She wasn't going to deny him the few pleasures he had left in life, like sugar and donuts, for the ridiculous goal of extending his life by a few months. If really old people earned anything, it was the right to eat whatever-the-hell they liked._

_Doc' stirred his tongue-curling sweet beverage. "So. The kid. Name was Jason Park. House suspected something beyond the leukemia, maybe not underlying it, but preceding it. Something that had been missed. But there was no medical evidence for that. All House had was his instinct. He did have an uncanny knack for seeing symptoms beyond the obvious. Once he suspected someone of having a brain tumor simply because of the way they were walking."_

_"Was he right?"_

_Doc' nodded. "I told him he was just looking for a mystery to solve. But it was hard to dispute his reasoning. The person was young, appeared flushed and healthy - energy was good. Blood clean. House insisted on an MRI but Cuddy refused. The guy hadn't even come in as a patient, he was delivering a package to Doctor . .uh . .Bettie? Barley? Something like that."_

_"Was the guy okay?"_

_"House convinced the guy to check himself into the hospital. Convinced him he was sick. Even instructed the poor guy on what symptoms to fake so House would have something to take back to Cuddy so he could get the MRI on his brain." Doc' sipped his coffee. Smiled. "Ha! House had the guy so damn scared he went along with it. Anyway, House got his MRI. Guy had a small centimeter sized benign tumor between his frontal lobes. Surgeon went in, took it out. Guy was fine."_

_"All that from a walk?"_

_Doc' shook his head. "Nope. House later confessed to me it wasn't the guys walk at all. It was the way the fellow was holding his head. He kept his head back a little. Like this." Doc' tilted his head slightly back, so his chin was raised just a fraction beyond what would be a natural carriage._

_"Then why did he tell Cuddy it was his walk?"_

_"Because House knew she wouldn't believe him if he told her it was the way the fellow held his head. A weird walk was something a skeptic at least might believe."_

_"And the lies."_

_"Yeah. And the lies."_

_"How do you think he figured it out? Was it really the way the man held his head? I mean the guy could have simply had a migraine or a sore neck."_

_"True. But you didn't know House. When he finally explained it to me, it made perfect sense. Most people might take one look and see a person with a headache, or maybe see nothing but a person looking thoughtful like he was walking through a park on a sunny day. Except it was a workday and a Monday. Who's happy on a Monday?? _

_"Anyway. When House first saw the guy, he was eating cheese sticks. Cheese is a common migraine trigger. Anyone who suffers them tries to stay away from it. Also the guy was in a hurry - flustered - like he was behind in his schedule. Rushing around raises blood pressure, making the likelihood of developing a headache greater, but there was no flush to his face so no high BP. _

_"Lastly the fellow was having a little trouble articulating, like he was really tired and his mind sleepy, though he was smiling, seemed happy and it was only nine AM. A tumor - the kind House described - would account for all those symptoms. So after scaring the guy to death, admitting him and then coaching him on what to lie about if asked, House went behind Cuddy's back and conducted an MRI on his brain."_

_"All that from a tilt?"_

_"Yup. The back tilt indicated that when he tilted his head forward, like to read the name plates on peoples' desks or a name on a door, his head hurt. I mean - who looks at the sky when they're looking for someone? Especially from inside a building!? It wasn't a migraine but, because of the fluid pressure change in his head at his frontal lobes where the tumor was taking up needed space, he did get headaches when ever he tilted his head forward."_

_Maria was astonished but a little skeptical. "Are you exaggerating? Maybe trying to give me a better story?"_

_"Did you look for me for months because you thought I was a liar?" _

_She conceded the point. _

_"I'm telling you, House was a maestro. He was like . . . Leopold, but in medicine. House was a genius."_

_"What about the kid? Houses' last case?"_

_"Jason Parks. Rich parents. Big contributors to the hospital and pretty near everything else in town that smelled of social conscience and a tax cut." Doc' sipped his by now cold coffee and made a face. "He came in with rectal bleeding. Weak, losing weight. House kept him on fluids and began the differential . . . You know what that is?"_

_Maria nodded. She'd done her research on Gregory Houses' methods and department. Department of Diagnostics. The only one in the country run by a cantankerous, non-conforming crank. Indisputably a genius but with a personality so obnoxious and professional conduct so bizarre his practice was rumored to be bordering quackery. _

_Yet his cure rate hovered near one hundred percent. People from all over the western world and Europe sought his help. When all others failed, House delivered. Doctor House saved somewhere between forty to sixty-five people per year on average at a departmental cost floating above three million dollars. He earned the hospital near zero profits. As far as Maria could see, House must have had a fairy god-administrator._

_"The differential laid out a few ideas . . ."_

XXX

"House, everything points to a bleeding disorder prompted by tainted blood." Foreman said. "The kid picked something up from one of the dozens, maybe hundreds of transfusions he's had to treat his leukemia."

House spread his hands. "Fine. Which one?" House pointed to his white-board. "Either tell us which "taint" or which pint of blood so we can test it."

Foreman gave House an exasperated look. "We ask the parents."

House nodded his head once. "Right. Ask the parents who spend their days counting money. They oughta' know all about doctor stuff."

"I think he means we ask the parents if any of the other attendings noted something-" Taub started.

"-Noted what?" House said, turning back to his white board. "That they screwed up? Didn't notice when their son suddenly started bleeding a whole lot more and from an orifice that's not supposed to? You think they'd admit it? That's why doctors carry malpractice insurance and hospitals have high priced lawyers. No doctor admits to not knowing something, especially to freaked out, well dressed parents."

Chase frowned. "I've heard you admit a mistake."

"But I fix my mistakes. If I ever did anything _really _stupid, I'd blame one of you guys."

Foreman sighed. "Fine. He got blood tainted with a missing protein factor."

"Hemophilia?" Chase said. "You're saying this kid was transfused with blood that was missing a protein and therefore his marrow stopped producing that protein? You inherit hemophilia, you can't give it away."

Foreman knew it was ludicrous, which is why he said it. "I'm saying this kid has leukemia with an inability to clot. He's received multiple transfusions which does not make no clotting a mystery. The body reacts in different ways to transfusions. _Not_ uncommon, _Chase_." Foreman looked from Chase to House. "_House." _Foreman crossed his arms, a sure sign to all he was done with the differential. "I'm saying this case should be on Wilsons' desk, not yours."

House ignored Foreman. "But right now it's on _my_ desk." He turned back to the white board, his mind searching there, not caring what Foreman did or did not do. "I don't care where it should be."

Foreman wasn't done chastising his boss. "Cuddy only let you take this case because she lets you do almost anything if it'll make the hospital look good."

"Cuddy is an Administrator. She fills in forms and looks good in champagne heels and she knows I'm the medicine man and that I'll turn out to be right. That's why she gave this case." House answered with near automation. His eyes, and his mind, were turned to the board, narrowed with thought.

Foreman shook his head, smiling around the table at his colleagues to bring them into his self contained circle of frustration at House. No one said a word. "Cuddy" Foreman continued unabated. "indulges you. It's always been a balancing act between you two. You do something nuts, she makes it go away-"

House spun on him. "Great!" He shouted. "You've discovered our secret. Run to Cuddy for a bone. Go tell her I'm wrong. Tell her I'm crazy. Go be a lawyer or an accountant or a pigeon trainer, because unless you want to practice _medicine_, I can't use you here." House, face flushed with anger, tapped his marker on the board and looked at the rest of them, ignoring Foreman all together. "As for the rest of you_ doctors_, what else?"

Kutner said "Maybe it's him, not a transfusion. Polycythemia Vera. His body is making too many red cells, white cells and platelets. Because despite the bleeding, his blood volume stays relatively static. The disease is masked. He's bleeding abnormally but no doctor checked for the disease because otherwise his blood volume stays the same and appears normal."

Taub shook his head emphatically. "Two genetic disorders in one body? Astronomical odds."

House raised his eyebrows and turned around. Foreman had left. He was disappointed, but Kutner was a sharp kid, which is why he hired him. "His blood would be thickening, but the bleeding off would be keeping it in the range or normal viscosity . . ."

As much of a doubter as Taub was, he was sharp too. "But the kid's in pain. Maybe the parents are slipping him aspirin."

House nodded. "And it doesn't explain why he's bleeding to begin with, but . . ." House wrote it on the board the nodded to the remaining members of his team. "Go draw some blood. He hasn't had any transfusions since he's been here, so it should be all his own juice in there. Check histamine levels, get a red, white and platelet cell count and a bone marrow biopsy. And check if the kids been scratching himself. I'm going to snoop in Mommy's purse."

_XXX_

_"Was he right? And did he really do things like conduct illegal searches?"_

_Doc' Wilson laughed quietly for a moment, his thin shoulders shaking a bit beneath the coffee stained blue pajama top. "Greg was a pip. He didn't hold with convention, honey. He loved a challenge. I think he wanted to be a thief when he was a kid. To him, pulling the wool over someone's eyes was like eating Mo-Jo's. He could chew on the taste of it for days."_

_He stopped laughing and turned his thoughts back again. "But he actually asked permission this time and not very politely so, naturally, the mother said no. "Go straight to hell." I think she said. So, well, House asked again, but this time the House-normal version of ask. He had Cuddy have her lawyer have a judge write a court order for Mommy to open her purse."_

_"Had she been giving her son aspirin?"_

_"Unfortunately, no."_

_"Unfortunately?"_

_"If Mom had been, she'd thrown the evidence away after House asked her the first time. But she probably hadn't been anyway. The problem was now the parents didn't think too much of House and wanted him off the case." Doc' screwed up his eyes. ""Keep that crazy bastard away from our son!" The kids Dad said."_

_"But House didn't stay away, did he?"_

_Doc' Wilson sighed and set thin lips of regret. "Nope."_

XXX

Part III ASAP


	3. Chapter 3

RETROSPECT

Part III

By GeeLady

Summary: A last case, a last breath, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and sets things right. (This is not a House's Head/Wilson's Heart related fic', it's something else altogether). Set POST Season 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number proves to be the final season).

Pairing: H/W slash implied.

Rating: Mature. Language.

WARNING! Primary character death - that means, yes, Gregory House! But please try it out anyway.

Note: Some of the medical terminology and situations are _**made up. **_Some of this story is set five years from now and some forty years from now, so I'm allowing myself the space to be creative in what I think might _someday_ be.

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_"First it was watery Diarrhea, then it was bleeding." Old Doc' Wilson explained. Maria's listened patiently while her stomach trembled with nausea at the chocolate pudding Doc' was pushing around in his mouth. "The bleeding could have been partly explained from the leukemia - multiple transfusions combined with compromised clotting factors, though none of that satisfied House."_

_He licked the spoon and dropped it into the plastic bowl. "The kid had so many things going wrong with him, it was impossible to sort out what was from the leukemia, the leukemia treatment or this mysterious preceding or underlying thing House insisted was there."_

_"But he was taken off the case?"_

_"Sure. Cuddy had to do what the parents wanted and they did not want House anywhere near their son."_

_Doctor Wilson sighed. "They were right."_

_Maria shook her head a bit. "I'm confused. If they were right -?"_

_"-Just because someone's right, sweetie, doesn't mean that they're not wrong. According to what they knew, to what they understood, to the evidence of their eyes and the medicine thus far, they were right. But to want House off the case because they didn't like his methods made them wrong." _

_"But House was reckless. It seems to me that he was inventing a mystery. That puzzles meant more to him than people."_

_"Solving puzzles meant more to him than catering to someone's feelings."_

_"But there was no puzzle."_

_"I didn't see one, Cuddy didn't. The parents sure as hell didn't. But House - that's what he did. He didn't just solve puzzles, he saw them where others didn't. House didn't care a lick about the parents or even the kid. What did it matter if he was fond of the kid or not? The parents loved the kid and it didn't save him. Cuddy respected the parents but the kid is still dead. For House, solving the puzzle meant saving the life. Can't you see that it's one and the same? He cared that the kid lived. To achieve that he needed to do whatever it took to solve the damn puzzle. To figure out what was wrong with him." _

_"But the kid is dead."_

_"I already told you, House didn't do that."_

_"If the kid is dead, the puzzle was un-solvable."_

_"That's what we all thought. Let the kid die in dignity, we said. Give the parents some peace . . ."_

XXX

"What kind of peace is that?" House shouted at Cuddy and she stared back, used to his yelling and immune to it. "There is no dignity in someone dying if they don't have to. Has anyone asked the kid if he feels dignified that others have chosen death for him? Seems like it's _their _peace they're worried about, not his."

"Your personal feelings about this are irrelevant. The parents have their own court order now to keep you away from their son. And if you know what's good for you and your job, you'll obey it."

Instead of leaving House stepped closer to her desk. She was not surprised. "Cuddy. I know this underlying problem has to be from a transfusion or a treatment he received for the leukemia."

"You don't _know_ that. You're guessing. You've suspended the transfusions since he's been here. Nothing has changed."

"Nothings changed because he's getting no treatment."

"Treatment for what? What is it - do you have any idea at all so _I_ can treat him?" She stood, throwing her arms out. "Come on, House, tell me what's wrong and I'll order up the medicine. We'll cure him!"

House sighed, staring at her desk, leaning his hands on it.

She saw. "Your leg hurts. Go home."

He took a deep breath. "The watery Diarrhea has responded to nothing. Now he's bleeding from his bowels and nothing we do is slowing it. These two symptoms are happening even though I suspended the transfusions and his own blood is testing normal for clotting factors. The kid is not a hemophiliac, so there's something else going on besides the leukemia."

"You _want_ there to be something else."

"Right! I'm a selfish bastard! I _want_ a million dollars. I _want_ a free hooker with every beer. I _want_ my leg to stop hurting. I _know_ something's wrong with this kid. He's losing weight despite a uninterrupted feeding tube _along with_ anti-diuretics. Will someone other than me please see this is not normal."

"He's had leukemia almost since he was born! There's nothing normal about him. People lose weight after chemo'. Their bodies' go into shock, they get bleeds sometimes days after when someone elses' blood is put into them. None of these things are out-of-the-ordinary."

"But all of them at the same time are. You can't just point to lukemia as a catch-all because you don't know the answer."

Cuddy sat back down and yelled back. "And you can't ignore it because you don't _have_ an answer."

"I'll get one." House countered. "You can bet on it."

"These parents are not interested in you finding your answer to your weekly puzzle. They're interested in their child getting well."

House held out his hands palms up. "Hmm. Maybe you're right. Sick child. Parents bring him to a hospital. The hospital has a doctor who solves sicknesses. I guess that _is_ too much like a puzzle." House said. "Tell you what. When you figure out a way to make it into just a _medical_ problem, you know where I am."

"House-" Cuddy called after his retreating limp, but he did not stop. Cuddy thought for a moment. The Parks were very important people. They owned half of the downtown core and made huge, and needed, contributions to the hospital.

But House was the one who figured medical mysteries out when no one else could. He did, in a way, solve puzzles. And to be fair to him, he did not just do it for the puzzle. If it was just the puzzle, there were plenty of unsolved (meaning dead) medical cases recorded in the medical journals every year House could chew over.

Working with a living patient was where House wanted to be. _"I can make him walk. I can make him talk!"_

Houses' words from two years before.

And he _had_ made the father and husband walk and talk.

Cuddy went to Houses' office and found him pitching his ball against the wall. He looked at her when she entered but didn't say anything. He was intelligent enough to know she was capitulating. She would have no reason to be there otherwise. "What do you suspect it might be?" She asked him. "Can you tell me that much? Do you have an educated guess at least?"

House caught the ball and swivelled his chair to her. "I think it's genetic. Somehow this kid has a second genetic disorder. We've eliminated every other reason for the bleed and the Diarrhea."

Cuddy could see he wasn't finished. "Which genetic disorder?"

"Microvillous Inclusion Disease."

"MID?? That only affects babies. _Infants_ in fact. Children under six months old."

"We know that only because no one's ever seen it in anyone older. That doesn't make it impossible."

"No, but it does make it highly improbable."

"That's even better than not impossible." House answered.

Cuddy watched him. He looked so damn self assured. But that didn't mean he couldn't be wrong. "If, and that's a big "if" this is MID, what treatment is there? Every case of MID has eventually proven fatal."

"Fatal with babies. Difficult to perform a bowel transplant on a baby with compromised immunities who's weak from hunger and fluid loss. A seven year old boy-"

"-He's nine."

"Again, even better. A nine year old-"

"-a nine year old who's suffering leukemia and who is weakened from the treatments for the leukemia. That is not a winning recipe for a dangerous transplant operation."

"I was thinking more along the lines of epidermal growth factor injections."

"Those are experimental only. And then only in rats. And they _kill_ the rats to check the intestinal progress or lack there-of."

"But it's not more dangerous than watching him bleed to death or dehydrate until his tongue splits. My team was barely keeping him hydrated. Now, under the tender care of Doctor Kassab, his red count is dropping. He's shedding huge amounts of mucosa epithelials, a text book MID symptom. How much more deadly is that? Deadlier than dying? 'Cause a dead kid is what the rich Parks will have if we don't do something right now."

"Supposing I convince the parents to try this treatment under Kassab, how long until the treatment takes effect?"

"Three or four days."

"And what do we do with this maybe genetic improbability if it doesn't work and the child starts dying?"

"He's already dying. But to answer your question, we cool him. Slow his heart and perform a large intestine transplant. Let him heal from that for a week. Then genetic therapy follow-up."

"Genetic therapy is in it's infant stages."

"Actually, it's more like toddler now that they've mapped the genome and now they're even onto the genes controlling the genome. Busy little bees, those researchers."

"This is crazy."

"The transplant will buy him time. Even if the gene therapy doesn't work, he'll have a few more years with rich mom and dad. They'll get to see him graduate Elementary school and find out what girls are. They'll get to hear his voice change and buy him a polo pony."

"Or the transplant won't take and he'll die without ever waking up."

"He'll die anyway."

"IF this is MID."

"It's MID."

"You can't be one hundred percent positive."

House threw the ball away angrily and stood, thumping his cane down, his equivalent of a stomping foot. "No!I'm not friggen' Merlin. I can't guarantee anything, but I'm here because you know I know my craft. So I'm doing my damn job. No, I don't absolutely know. But this is what I_ think_."

Cuddy thought for a few seconds. Houses' outburst did not influence her decision, but his experience and knowledge did. That plus his record of having so often been proven right about a case when everyone else, including her, had been wrong. "I'll talk to the parents. They're going to have full disclosure every step of the way."

House sat again. "I expected nothing less. Tell Kassab he's welcome."

XXX

_"Was House right?"_

_Old Doc' Wilson wiped cookie crumbs from his mouth. He certainly liked to eat, Maria observed. He'd been drinking and snacking the whole time since she'd arrived._

_"__**Maybe,**__ we thought. That was the trouble with Diagnostics - with any doctor diagnosing some conditions - the conditions themselves did nothing to help out. Symptoms, treatments and responses to treatments vary so widely. It isn't always so easy to tell from symptoms what was going on. Any one of a dozen things could have been wrong with that kid. He could have been allergic to his own intestinal epithelials."_

_"Really?"_

_"Well, probably not. But some people are allergic to sunshine . . . " He shrugged._

_"So House was wrong?"_

_"Eventually we were given reason to think so. We were inclined to disagree with House."_

_"You make it sound like everyone was against him."_

_"Not against him. Just against his diagnosis."_

XXX

"You want to use my son as a lab rat?" Tall, rich Mister Parks asked, eyeing up House as he would a potential under-educated future employee.

House had, to Cuddy's infinite annoyance, joined the meeting going on in her office uninvited. The Parks had stormed in when Kassab had proposed the treatment. Mister Parks had smelled House all over it.

House was non-plussed. "No, trusted researches have already experimented on rats. I want to inject your son with the same stuff they used on the rats."

Parks was done with House and turned to the Dean of the hospital they so generously supported. "What's this "stuff" supposed to do?"

"We hope it will effectively boost the efficiency of your son's intestinal track."

"My son has leukemia. Why isn't he being treated for that? Our doctor said there was nothing wrong with his intestines." Misses Parks assured Cuddy.

But House countered. "So your doctor believes his diagnosis was right, and so sent him here - _why_? - to make sure?" He asked the distraught, tight collared parents who had little patience for Houses' flip attitude or rumpled clothing - a sure sign, Mister Parks' expression seemed to say as he looked House up and down once - of a shoddy workman.

"Your son," House explained for, he decided right then, the last time, "is dying. We do nothing, he continues to bleed and lose fluids. We give him transfusions, he continues to bleed and lose fluids - only faster. We treat him my way, maybe he stops bleeding and losing fluids. Maybe he lives."

"I've had enough of your brand of treatment." Mister Parks commented.

"I hope your son feels differently." House answered.

"Why can't you just give him blood and fluids faster than he's losing them?" Misses Parks asked in her sincere but motherly ignorance.

"Because the human body regulates itself rather carefully." House said. "There's a reason we can only hold so much urine in our kidneys and bladder or why when it's hot we sweat and get thirsty, or how much beer a football fan can drink in four Downs. We can't over-fill a body just like a barkeep can't over-fill a beer glass. Human physiology says _No."_

The Parks looked over at Cuddy for her assurance that House wasn't insane and to see her confidence in him. They looked to her because, despite their hastily obtained court order to keep House away, they were blindly reaching for hope and wanted her medical confirmation of that hope.

"I think you should trust Doctor House." She had nothing better to offer them but their son's assured death.

Mister Parks placed a comforting hand on Misses Parks sharp, tense shoulder. "Fine." He said.

XXX

_"Houses' team began the injections and the kid was monitored. After three days of forcing fluids into Jason, a biopsy of his intestinal epithelials showed a slight thickening of his large intestinal wall but virtually no other change. The results were poor at best and made no difference in the rate of the kids deterioration."_

_Maria listened to Doc' Wilson describe the medical events as though it had happened yesterday. Where his profession was concerned, his mind was as sharp as a tack. "So House was wrong?"_

_"I didn't say that." He gave her an irritated scowl. "Stop putting words in my mouth."_

_"Sorry."_

_"I said the __**treatment**__ wasn't working. House could still be right, we thought. Everything he had said made sense." Doc' adjusted his backside. "Damn chair needs more padding. I put in a request a month ago. See? Nothing gets done if you don't do it yourself."_

_"I can find you a cushion." Maria offered._

_"No, no. I'll have Roma get me one. I have to go to the men's room anyway. She can scare me one up while I'm in there."_

_Maria waited patiently as Doc' took his time in the washroom and Roma scrambled around trying to find a soft pillow for her charge - one that wasn't being used elsewhere. Finally she re-appeared with a thin feather filled square of material that looked like it had seen better days. It was stained and here and there feathers poked their sharp ends out into the wide world. "Here you are, Doctor Wilson."_

_Doc' was slowly shuffling slippered feet across the short space of floor back to his wheel chair. The effort for him was great and the relief at once more being seated caused him to let out a great whoosh of air. His oxygen tank hummed to greater life, trying to nurse his weakened lungs. "Whew. Now I know how House felt. 'Had to reach ninety to really appreciate what a pain in the ass it to be crippled up."_

_Maria waited, pen in hand while Doc' settled himself comfortably again. _

_"That's better. My old ass can't take a hard surface anymore."_

_Maria smiled at the crudeness of the doctor. "Were you always so outspoken?"_

_It was his turn to smile and a wide toothy grin peeked out between colorless lips. "No. I was a tight-ass back then. Always afraid of what others thought. Hardly knew how to have fun. Repressed in almost every way. Except for Gregory - I never felt that way around him. I took to him like . . .well like a shy, awkward kid takes to the class clown. House made my life . . .come __**to life**__! Many things about me started to change after I met him."_

_"How did you meet?"_

_"He came to me with a problem." He chortled. "Imagine! The great ingenious Doctor House coming to simple, baby-faced Wilson with a problem."_

_"What was the problem?"_

_"A man's problem, dear." He looked at her, apparently deciding she was old enough. "Testicle!" Doc' almost shouted it. The nurses in the hall, Maria guessed, heard it and the two people passing by the Doc's room clearly did as they stopped and stared curiously at the half opened door. _

_"One of his balls was off. Wasn't doing right."__ Doc's voice returned to normal, which, due to a small hearing problem was still a register above anything she was used to. "House was worried it was cancer." _

_Maria thought that might be an interesting tale but she had only another few hours to hear the rest of Doc's story and reluctantly led the conversation back to the memories at hand. "Tell me more about Houses' diagnosis of the Parks boy."_

_"Yeah. The kid. Well, the parents agreed to let House try his highly experimental epithelial injection treatment but it didn't do any damn good. Not enough by the medical judgement of most of us. But enough in Houses' eyes to give the kid another round. Damn kid suffered like hell. Long goddamn needles jabbed into his abdomen and up his kazoo. Painful as hell. Couldn't afford any anesthetic because his BP was dropping like a rock due to the bleeding and fluid loss. He damn near went hypovolemic on us once. House got the BP up again by an injection of saline mix and by our collective prayers maybe."_

_Maria had heard some of the terms Doc' was using. Like, BP was blood pressure and hypovolemic meant blood loss to the point where the arteries and veins are so reduced in their blood volume they collapse. Collapsed arteries means no blood flow no matter how hard the heart is beating. No blood flow so no oxygen delivered to the brain and body cells and that translates into a rapid death._

_"So the epithelial idea was out the window as far as the kids parents were concerned. They wanted Jason back on the transfusions for his leukemia and would broker no argument about it."_

_"So that was it? The kid died?"_

_"No. I'm getting there. The parents had a meeting with Cuddy to let her know of their decision and that how right they had been in court ordering House off the clock on their son, which she went right along with. In those days, most times parents still out-ranked doctors when it came to choosing treatment for their children. House argued too. He insisted further treatments would buy him time to find out what else might be going on."_

_"So it wasn't Micro . . .villan-y? Inclusion Disease?"_

_"Micro-__**villous**__ Inclusion Disease. That was still Houses' contention but I could see he was starting to have other thoughts along with it. Even if somehow something had delayed the onset of the disease, it was still genetic and both parents would have had to carry the defective gene. So House asked, sort of as a last request, if he could have them tested to make certain of his diagnosis."_

_"You'd think that would have been the __**first**__ step."_

_"You'd think. But even geniuses make mistakes. And we were under tremendous strain and fighting the clock. The kid was bleeding. The parents were screaming. Cuddy was beside herself on the one hand trying to calm them, on the other trying to convince them that House was her best doctor and on the other other hand trying to control House in such a way that the Parks didn't find out what a nut he really was." Doc' paused to appreciate his own wit. _

_"Seems like House was loathe to obey a court order, or abandon a theory."_

_"You figure huh? That's where you're dead wrong, sister. House didn't give a damn about saving face or his score card. He wanted to solve the damn puzzle. He wanted to save the kid. The parents went along with the test I think mostly because they were by then curious as to whether they were responsible after the fact for their kids secondary illness and maybe just to shut House up once and for all." _

_"Okay. So was the kid sick with Microvillous Inclusion Disease?"_

_"No." Doc' finally told her. "Bloody too bad, too."_

XXX

"It isn't MID and they don't want you anywhere near their son." Cuddy explained to a incredulous House. She was often startled by his shock that some parent or family member one might want to keep a raging lunatic, even if he _was_ a doctor, away from their dying loved one. That they might even insist he obey their hard argued court order to do so.

"Now _you're _taking me off the case?"

Cuddy sat at her desk, grateful for a few minutes to rest her feet and gather her nerves. House made that problematic. "_They_ took you off the case. Wilson will be supervising the kids transfusions for his leukemia."

"Supervising? Great." House shot back. "Wilson can write down numbers and the kid will have a full tank when he bites it."

"His bleeding has eased back. He's getting plenty of fluids . . ."

"And pissing them out at the same rate they're going in. And his bleeding had eased because I suggested to Wilson he plump up the units with synthetic heparin."

"You did not."

"Ask him."

Cuddy saw the belligerence in his eye. It would be just like House to circumvent a drawn line by tossing the ball to someone else. And just like Wilson to cave under that belligerence and catch the damn ball.

House followed her to her desk. "But that's a stop gap that won't last."

"It's not MID. You were wrong. This isn't one of your theoretical differentials, this is a child. He needs treatment for his leukemia. You had more than enough time."

"I can't sure people by a time card. He needs treatment that will keep him alive. I can't do that without-"

"_You_ won't be doing it at all."

House sat in the chair opposite her desk. "Yes, I was wrong about the MID. It was a long shot. But leukemia is not causing this kid to bleed from his rectum. Give me twenty-four hours. I'll get the team back here, we'll go over everything again. We'll draw new blood, biopsy his intestinal wall - this time we'll get a sample from the cecum and a cutting from his appendix. We'll put his submucosa under the scope-"

Cuddy was very tired. "House." He stopped and looked at her, his eyes were expecting her to agree to it. To let him do what he needed to do as she so often had done. If it was her child, she would. But Jason belonged to someone else who not only had the right to say no to House but a court order to back him up. And he was a man of power who paid part of Houses' salary through his generous monetary donations to the hospital. "House. _You_ will do nothing. Go home. Let those poor parents celebrate their living son while they still can."

House closed his mouth and raised himself slowly to his feet. He was tired too, Cuddy could see. "If it were up to me . . ." She offered lamely.

He nodded, accepting that her hands were tied. She had a whole hospital and hundreds of patients to think about. She couldn't ignore rules and law, risking the hospitals license and all her other practitioners and their patients care, just because he thought he could maybe save just one of them.

XXX

_"So the kid died?"_

_"No. House went home, drank a few beers. I called him. We talked and I said something that must have lodged in his brain. It stayed there and stewed for a while like it sometimes did."_

_"What did you say?"_

_"We were talking about the kid of course. The case, the puzzle. With House it was: Solve the Puzzle and maybe the patient lives."_

_"Maybe?"_

_"Medicine isn't like swapping out a new tranny'. Even with treatment, people often die. Sometimes because the treatment comes too late or it's the wrong dose or the patient refuses it for some reason. Sometimes the puzzle is solved but there is no treatment. Like that fucking Gun!" Doc' looked at his guest. "Sorry." He blushed a little and it was the first time Maria had seen any color to his cheeks. _

_"Anyway. We talked about the kid and then I remembered that my birthday was coming up and I invited House out for a few drinks. Figured it might cheer him up a bit."_

_"Did it work?" _

_"No. All he talked about was the case. I mentioned that the parents had come back early from a trip to Newfoundland. They owned land and a big house up there and House . . .House got this look in his eye." _

_Doc' smiled at the memory that was obviously so vivid in his mind but which Maria could hardly see. "House would get these looks, see, whenever he had a breakthrough idea. He was like a kid who finishes a jigsaw - when he puts that last oddly shaped piece in its right place and smiles up at you like he just won the biggest prize at the fairground. Only House didn't smile or laugh. All he did was what he usually did when he got that look - he got up and limped from the room like a three legged dog with a bone."_

_"Is that what happened? Did House figure it out?"_

_Doc nodded emphatically. "Yup. House had an epiphany."_

_"And was he wrong about the MID?"_

_"Yes. It wasn't MID. And, sweetie, it wasn't even __**leukemia."**_

XXX

"Then what the hell is it, House?" Cuddy held the receiver in one hand and her schedule of a dozen things in the other, paying far more attention to the second item. House had called her, voice tight and fast with what she recognized as a new pitch. House had a last ditch theory of why his former patient, Jason Parks' illness, had stubbornly refused to bow to his diagnostic skill.

"His parents took the kid to Canada, didn't they? Right? A vacation to celebrate? That's what you meant when you said celebrate? Not the last few days of life but the kids _birthday._ I'd put money on that they ate raw clams while they were there. Probably had a hell of a time convincing the restaurant to serve them that way - Canadians don't eat clams and oysters raw. They very wisely _cook_ them. It helps them avoid picking up those nasty little inconveniences like Vibrio bacteria-"

"-You're telling me you think this kid has a simple molluscan infection?" Cuddy asked. She tucked to the phone between her ear and shoulder while her assistant entered with more priorities typed up in neat, bullet-style columns. "It would have shown in his blood work."

"Unless it was a very rare molluscan infection like Vibrio cholerae Non-O1, Non-O139."

"Are you serious? This kid doesn't have cholera."

"Screen him for Vibrio C' and we'll know. This might even be a contributing factor of what his doctor thinks is leukemia"

"Now you think he doesn't have leukemia??"

"Pernicious anemia would account for almost all of his symptoms, including the pathology of his bone marrow. The kid can't produce Vitamin B12. He's deficient in

his parietal cells - he can't absorb it from his food, and he's infected with Vibrio Cholerae."

"Anemia almost always presents with jaundice. He's pink."

"By now I'm betting he's white. Prior to coming here, he was getting three blood transfusions a week. Because of that he was getting just enough B12 through the donor blood to pass for healthy."

"Wilson administered a transfusion only a day ago."

"Fine. So he'll be pink for a few hours. Stop the transfusions and watch his color go from normal to bleach to daffodil."

"House. Take a few days off. Go see your parents. Take in a movie."

"Cuddy. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but if I'm right! If I'm right, all we need to do is pump him full of high dose B12 for the deficiency along with an intramuscular prochloroperazine series plus intravenous ciprofloxacin for the cholera."

"I'm hanging up now."

"Ask him if his parents fed him raw clams."

"Goodbye House."

"Just ask him!"

XXX

_"Did she ask?"_

_"No. The parents were satisfied with the treatment their son was getting. House was grasping at straws - was what Cuddy thought. House hated to lose, not because it would mean he was wrong but because it would mean he had failed. Failed to cure where he could have if given more time."_

_"__**Was**__ House wrong?"_

_"I'm getting to that."_

_Maria was tiring of that particular phrase. _

_"House knew Cuddy couldn't fold on his side. So House did what House often did. He went behind her back. He went back to the hospital and began the intramuscular injections of prochloroperazine himself."_

_"And you allowed it?"_

_"Of course not. House slipped into the kids room at night and bull-shitted him about how it was treatment for his leukemia and just routine. House was betting the kid would roll over, go back to sleep and not mention it the next day. And it probably would have worked. Hell - House could have administered the whole series and the ciprofloxacin with no one, not even the kid, the wiser."_

_"But he was caught."_

_"Yeah. A nurse came in to check the kid's color."_

_"A nurse did? But I thought Cuddy-?"_

_"Cuddy mentioned Houses' theory to me and I thought, well. . .I couldn't go against the parents but what would it hurt to monitor the kid's color? I thought if maybe House was right . . ."_

_"So you . . .?"_

_"I was the reason House was caught. I'm the reason, the first reason, House lost his license to practice medicine. So I'm also the first reason he ended up where he did."_

_"Was that why you were so desperate to save him from the street? How could you have known?"_

_"Right. How could I have known? How could any of us had known? Hire a genius to diagnose people where all others fail and instead of supporting his genius, we tell him he's wrong. We tell him we know better, even if we don't. We tell him these things because rules and laws exist to protect the rights of parents and the rights of hospitals to avoid law-suits where-ever possible. All good laws. All necessary rules. Except there was no law or rule that protected that kids' right to live and decide for himself. And no law or rule that let House do the job he was hired for."_

_"Without protective measures-"_

_"-I know, I know. There has to be a breakwater. Doctors just can't charge in trying every conceivable treatment that pops up in their head because it might be right. Even if a doctors' record proves he almost always __**is**__ right._

_"Cuddy, me, the hospital, even the parents did all the right things for, medically, all the wrong reasons and thereby achieved the very worst result. And House did all the wrong things for all the right reasons for the very best hoped for result."_

_"Put like that, it sounds like you regret those safeguards are in place."_

_"What good are they when your patient is dying? What use did they serve us that time but to collar a brilliant diagnostician just because he believed in his perhaps unlikely but perfectly medically plausible theory?"_

_"So was House right? Did the kid have cholera and B12 deficiency?"_

_"I'm getting to that."_

XXX

Part IV ASAP. _Off to Mexico until July 10th._

See the story _**Spermotacele and a Rubber Nose**_ for my take on the explanation behind Doctor Houses' testicle problem and his first meeting with James Wilson - Oncologist.


	4. Chapter 4

RETROSPECT

Part IV

By GeeLady

Summary: A last case, a last breath, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and sets things right. (This is not a House's Head/Wilson's Heart related fic', it's something else altogether). Set POST Season 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number proves to be the final season).

Pairing: H/W slash implied.

Rating: Mature. Language.

WARNING! Primary character death - that means, yes, Gregory House! But please try it out anyway.

Note: Some of the medical terminology and situations are _**made up. **_Some of this story is set five years from now and some forty years from now, so I'm allowing myself the space to be creative in what I think might _someday_ be.

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_"Greg once told me that diagnostic medicine was a crap shoot and he was a professional gambler."_

_"He was lucky?" Maria raised her eyebrows. "So his genius was irrelevant? Did he gamble with that kids life? If he did he is responsible for his death."_

_"That was just his take on it. House didn't gamble with patients' lives unless there was no other step to take. Nothing that would lead to a cure. Diagnostic medicine - hell - any practice of medicine is part knowledge and part letting God sort it out."_

_"He was a drug addict. And, from what you've described to me, an alcoholic. He took risks. He played the odds. House was right calling what he did a crap shoot."_

_"House trained under the best medical minds of the last century. He cured almost every damn case sent to him - most of them considered insolvable or hopeless. His kind of medicine wasn't luck, it was skill."_

_"Then why did he fail with this one?"_

_"I keep telling you - we failed! House wanted to treat that kid - help him - and we took it upon ourselves to stop him."_

_"You can't know the kid would have survived if House had been allowed to treat him. You said yourself that House was barred from the kid and the kid died. If House was so damn right about everything - why is that kid dead?"_

_Doc' gave her an telling wink. "You're a sharp one. All in good time. House was so adamant about everything. He had a unique up-bringing, a sweet mom and a lousy father - abusive son-of-a-bitch. I never learned any of that until House came to live with me right before he got sick. I mean really sick, not just Gun sick."_

_"What did the Gun do to him? I've read very little about it."_

_Doc' Wilson fingered the wool blanket draped over his knees. Maria felt the dampness in the air. So many long term geriatric care facilities were in such a state - breaking down all over the country with taxes higher than ever. No wonder Doc' was so opinionated about the current state of the Union._

_"We named it, you know. I mean, not me and Cuddy or Plainsborough. But the medical community. Street hypes' think they came up with the moniker."_

_"It fits. Taking any kind of heroin is like playing Russian roulette. It really is like holding a metaphorical gun to your head."_

_"And a non-metaphorical one. We labeled it Gun for that, and for a very different reason. A far uglier one than any image of a drug addict holding a needle to his arm, or a suicidal addict holding a gun to his head. Gun heroin is a genetically modified opiate derived from poppy seeds just like any other. But a real ambitious scientist decided to modify it a little more to see what he could come up with. To see just how potent, how harmful he could make the shit. I hope someone fed him a bowl of it for breakfast."_

_Maria was silenced by the venom in Doc's voice. She could see and feel the rage behind his words, his un-quelled sense of outrage at the damage the substance had introduced into his friend Gregory Houses' life. _

_"Gun works by entering the human D1 dopamine receptor gene that's located on chromosome 5 at q35.1." He knew most of that meant little to her so he explained further. "Subtype D1 is the most prevalent type of dopamine receptor in the bodies central nervous system. It stimulates and regulates, among other things, neuron growth. Dopamine as you may know is one of the so-called "feel good" chemicals our bodies produce. We can't live without it. More to the point, without these feel good chemicals, we wouldn't want to live. Without them, the neurons in our brains begin to malfunction. Our behavior malfunctions._

_"Gun goes in and modifies D1 but it does it in a very, very specific way. With the first hit - we in the medical community called it a "bullet" - Gun enters the D1 dopamine receptor gene and makes a hole. Not a bonafide hole like a bullet makes but a marker - an "announcement" or a sign to indicate to its pals that will soon visit that it was there before them - like a gang member spraying graffiti on a fence or, in the case of Gun, a greeting from a stranger to the occupant. _

_"Gun says Hello to the D1 genome, and leaves it's John Henry behind for the next bullet - the next arrival of its gang. Then it -" He made as though his hands were two leggy bugs crawling away across the floor "goes away. It dies like a spider after it's laid an egg sack._

_"When the junkie takes his second Gun hit or bullet, that bullet goes in, "sees" the hole, recognizes that it's fellow gunslinger was there ahead of him and settles down beside that mark - the hole that was made from the first bullet. This new Gun bullet makes a second hole. But it also deposits a part of it's own genome sequence into the first hole and the second hole it just made. The it goes away and dies. Gets eventually flushed out of the hosts body like aspirin would be._

_"Now Junkie takes his third bullet and this one goes in, sees the first two holes and attaches the next part of its' mutual genome sequence to the first and second holes and makes a third one. Then it goes away and dies. And on and on down the line until bullet number six. _

_"Junkie liked those first five bullets. Oh, he liked them so much he just can't quit. Here's the rub. If Junkie decides not to take that sixth bullet or hit, he could still recover. Hard as hell rehab - the worst - but he might make it because the partial genome sequence those bullets fired will remain inert. Inactive. Dormant. _

_"But shoot that sixth bullet and Gun deposits the final part of its own genetic sequence and there's almost no turning back. At this stage, Gun is active within the junkies system, re-writing his D1 dopamine gene and making itself invisible."_

_"How do you mean?" Maria was impressed and a little horrified by what she was hearing._

_"It's trying to tell the D1 receptor to ignore it. Do you see what that means? It means the body soon will be unable to "see" Gun. It'll feel it. It'll make junkie feel good. Good for as long as a Gun high lasts. A high dose might put the addict in the pain-free clouds for a few hours at best. The body will feel it, use it, obediently distribute it to the brain cells, even eventually - a long time down the road - flush it out so the junkie can feel the next effect of Gun - a long, hard, miserable crash filled with a physical agony of a description I can't imagine. Pain beyond the Ten scale. One medical journal I read once reported a subject - a junkie - describing the pain as though his bones were trying to crawl out of his body. Terrible pain."_

_"My god."_

_"The worst part about Gun is when the Junkie takes his seventh hit - we called it "the one up the pipe". The one that flushes your life away - that last bullet goes in, deposits the remainder of its mutual genome sequence through the first six holes, makes it own seventh hole, leaves its mark behind there as well, right onto the D1 receptor and then it plugs all the holes. It plugs itself in, like a socket into an electrical outlet or loading new software of the worst kind onto a previously well functioning hard drive. Gun acts like a virus only it doesn't just hide in the cells or the DNA or the genes, it becomes part of them. It becomes alive but invisible to the bodies defenses. No amount of morphine injections, no amount of detox will get rid of that new genetic code. Now the junkie can't live without Gun. For Gun to continue to make the high it needs more of it itself just like any narcotic but because the junkies D1 receptor no longer works without it, the junkie is trapped. So the junkie can't stand life without ever increasing doses of Gun. If he doesn't get Gun, not only will he feel the worst pain imaginable, but he'll go mad." _

_"Who in their right mind would knowingly create something like that?"_

_"Anyone with the funding and the knowledge. Thing is, the guy who designed it probably didn't know exactly what it was he had created until well into the experimental stages. Rats, frogs, rabbits . . .by that time, it was too late. Though you haven't heard the worst part yet." _

_Maria stared at old Doc's grey face. His red rimmed eyes spoke almost as much as his dry, cracked lips did. _

_"Because Gun can't been seen by the immune system or any of the host's physiological systems, but can only be felt by the host himself, the body's defenses can't find it. Even if the immune system had a defense against it, it couldn't use it. Gun kills by tricking the body into an insatiable need for more Gun while preventing the host from ever being able to flush it out. It rewrites specific genetic code to protect itself while it kills."_

_"It sounds like a genetic weapon." _

_"Might have been funded that way, but no one outside the military really knows."_

_"I'm a bit confused. I understand why the junkie gets trapped into the ever increasing need for highs, but in laymans' terms, can you explain to me exactly how Gun kills the host?"_

_"It interferes with correct dopamine production. The body, though, can't see what's interfering so it sends out a massive assault on the bodies systems. An immune reaction begins which escalates over a very short time. The bodies muscles, joints, blood vessels, organs, even the fat cells come under attack. Gun kills like AIDS used to, only within months. Not years or decades - months! Eventually the immune system - and remember it's a hyper-immune response, not a collapse of the immune system like in AIDS though the result is one and the same - becomes depleted and crashes. The body begins to break down. It can no longer fight infections, no longer absorb nutrients. Gun addicts usually die of starvation before any other complications become bad enough to kill them."_

_"Is that how Greg House died?"_

_With a great shuddering intake of the room's stale air, he said, "That's how his body died." Doc' Wilson began to weep silently. "But we killed the rest of him long before that."_

XXX

"Will the defendant please stand."

Wilson watched with a sinking heart as his best friend and colleague stood before the judge. His lawyer and the plaintiff's lawyer and the plaintiff - Mister Parks, father of dead Jason Parks - also stood.

Parks' face carried the stony look of the man in the right. Righteous vengeance. Justice. All those things were clearly evident in his expression.

House stood like a man who had been forced to quit a foot race just as he was about to cross the finish line. Jason Parks was on his mind. Not the boy Jason Parks but the patient. Houses' dead patient. Wilson knew this time there would bo no Cuddy able to rescue House from his punishment. House was about to be found guilty - they all knew it - and the judge would set a date for sentencing a few weeks down the line.

House was moments from losing his license to practice medicine and his freedom to live as he pleased. He would be spending those few weeks in a Remand center and no one knew how many years in some other prison facility.

The court room air felt oppressive and all eyes were on the accused.

Judge read the verdict brought to her by the Bailiff. "On the criminal charge of Involuntary Manslaughter the jury has found you Guilty. On the criminal charge of Abuse of a Child under your care, the jury has found you Guilty. On the final charge of ignoring a court issued order to Cease and Desist of treatment of the patient Jason Parks, the jury has found you Guilty. Therefor it is the judgement of your peers and this court that on all three counts you are guilty as charged."

The judge completed her reading of the verdict against Doctor House. "Do you have anything to say before I proceed?"

House did not look at the judge or his lawyer. He didn't glance around to see Cuddys' stricken face or Wilsons' guilty one. House didn't look at the floor. He didn't look anywhere. He shook his head No.

"We will reconvene for sentencing in two weeks time. In the interim Doctor House you will be incarcerated in the local Remand until that day. Please take Doctor House into custody."

Wilson and Cuddy watched the handcuffs placed around Houses' wrists and he was lead away. He never looked at either of them.

XXX

_"Doctor House was sentenced to ten years and sent to jail. A year later, a few of us got together and filed a motion to lessen the first charge to Reckless Endangerment. We also managed to have the Abuse of a Child charge reduced to Departure from Appropriate Care. It shaved six years off his sentence. But his medical career was still over."_

_"Doctor House ignored a court order. He attempted to treat a patient while under that order and did so behind the parents and the Dean's back. His experimental treatment of that kid resulted, as far as I can see, in the kids death. That's criminal." Maria insisted._

_"Yes! - House did everything wrong. I already said that. You were here - you must have heard me. I'm not defending his wrong actions, I'm telling you why that kid died. I'm telling you why House died and why it was our fault. And his final treatment of that kid was not experimental."_

_To her if Doc' Wilson was trying to prove House __**deserved**__ everything he got, he could hardly have chosen a better story. "Then explain it to me so I can understand."_

_"That's what I'm doing. The experimental treatments were supported by the parents. Try and remember the __**facts**__ I'm giving to you and stop assuming House was some kind of villain with a bowl of leeches and a cattle-prod. Every damn reporter who ever covered that story assumed he was guilty before turning on their damn computer. If you're going to do the same bloody thing, you can go home."_

_Whew. Old Doc' was very protective of his former friend and colleague. But despite Doc's outburst, she wasn't going to assume House was innocent either. "What happened after he got out of jail? I mean after you saw him at the clinic that first time?"_

_"One day the doorbell rang and it was House."_

_"How was he? He was a hype by then. Addicted to Gun." She shivered at bit at the thought of the stuff. "How did he look?"_

_Doc' had calmed down. He looked at the floor and then at her, his wide brown eyes full of pain. "I hardly recognized him." _

XXX

"_House!_?" Wilson had made himself a mid morning snack of scones and blueberry jam and was trying out a new coffee. At seeing Houses' gaunt appearance he suddenly felt guilty for the crumbs on his lips. He waved him in. "Jeez - House - come inside."

The air was mid-November chilled and House wasn't dressed for it in his knee length thin summer rain coat. It looked like it had been sewn for someone else, someone far wider in the shoulder than he. Its hem was frayed from being stepped on. House smelled like a still water ditch. He shook his head at Wilson's offer. "I need some money."

"Of course but-"

Wilson could see House needed much more than that. A decent meal, a bath, a warm place to sleep. "Please come in?" Wilson asked his friend. "I'll help you any way I can."

"I can't, Jimmy." House had not looked into Wilsons' eyes yet and Wilson was suspect something was seriously wrong - more wrong than just House being an addict or a man with the appearance of living on the streets.

Wilson almost couldn't stand what had happened to his friend. Almost couldn't bear what was still happening. He reached out a hand for House to take it.

But instead House shifted his feet, actually took a step back. "It wasn't your fault." It was the first time House had spoken to Wilson of the trial and all the things that had happened to put him where he was now.

Wilson felt the guilt, the shame, the helplessness anew. "Maybe not. But if we'd just seen-"

"-Parks would have eaten you too." House coughed and now looked at his old friends concerned eyes. "Can you spare any?"

The tender moment was over but House had exposed himself. Wilson could see a desperation in his eyes born of something other than street hunger or a junkies need for a fix. "What's going on? Please let me help you."

House almost shouted it. "You _can't." _Then he put dirty hands in torn pockets and sighed. "Please."

Wilson's resolve to be strong buckled under the weight of Houses' obvious torment. That he was in agony was plain. Pain from what - other than his leg - wasn't. Wilson decided to outright ask, "I'll give you whatever you want if you'll tell me."

"You'll give it to me anyway won't you?"

Wilson had to admit that yes he would and said so with a tiny nod. But from years of friendship he knew House would confess if Wilson asked him without design - without the need to fix. As long as House believed there was no obligation to social knots of repentance or apology, he would tell him. But for some undisclosed reason House wouldn't allow any assistance, even on his own terms, which terms Wilson would adhere to no matter how nuts. Wilson decided he would adhere to almost anything to keep House within sight and willingly do _all_ things for the knowledge that he was safe. "Why won't you let me help you?"

"It's _Gun_." House said looking directly at him. "Gun. Okay? I'm on Gun."

Wilsons' knees almost folded beneath him and his eyes watered on their own. If his love and concern for House made House uncomfortable, he didn't care. He wanted House to know that. House needed someone to care. Decades of denial had failed to erase that basic human requirement of all: the need to be needed. House, despite all protests, was subject to his humanity just like everyone else.

But Gun? Gun wasn't just an addiction, it was a death sentence. It was a marked ending to a horrible route. It was a death car on rails and you couldn't help but turn with it down the littered empty streets to the graveyard.

Wilson wanted to embrace him but was afraid House would run. "G-gun?" It must have happened while he was in jail. The pain or the loneliness had gotten to him. Parks counter-appeal of their appeal to reduce the charges must have, via his court-appointed outclassed lawyer, reached Houses' ear and made off with his hope. A man of fifty-four with no career or purpose waiting for him upon release at, the earliest, age of sixty would find it easy to turn away from unfounded hope and toward anything that offered relief.

Wilson could well imagine the aspirin that had been offered by the penal system to ease the pain in his leg, an analgesic not remotely strong enough to touch Houses' damaged, twitching nerves.

And Wilson could see in his minds eye Parks' personal signature on his secretary's type-written letter stating his intent to see that House remain incarcerated until he was a crippled old man.

When all was said and done, Parks' threats had proved weightless, but Gun had found House and hit its mark, straight to whatever motivations he had managed to preserve and cutting them down in their infancy.

House, Wilson calculated, had been out of jail less than a year and that meant he had already lived out most of his remaining life. Gun took no prisoners.

Wilson now could see what the desperation in Houses' tired blue eyes meant. The missing question was answered and the answer was House was in extreme need of a bullet. He was late for his next hit of Gun and if he didn't get it soon would be in unimaginable pain.

Parks had held no bars to ruin House. They had been forced to testify to the truth of Houses' past actions, his antagonistic personality and his unlawful actions prior to his conviction. All of them together had sent House to jail. Parks had done his best to keep him there. Now Gun was finishing the job.

If only they'd had the courage to stand up for House and tell Parks to take his contribution millions and go straight to hell. If only Cuddy had not carried the careers of dozens on her shoulders. If only he himself had seen what Parks was doing behind the scenes - bribery, digging up old injuries to personal pride House had inflicted on people, Tritter being one. IF any of them had only seen any of it, House might have been spared, if not jail, then the hopelessness. The last strike from Parks that had taken Houses' one ray of light - that he would get out of jail early and maybe, just maybe, start up his medical career elsewhere. Maybe be re-instated as a practicing man of medicine. That last blow had done him in.

It was all irrelevant now. "Gun?" Wilson wanted to wrap his arms around his friend and squeeze the gallows from his future. Instead, with a sick heart and escaping tears, he opened his wallet and handed over whatever he had. It amounted to a only few hundred dollars.

House took it, need winning over pride. "It's not your fault, Wilson." He said looking away to the street. His home and source of his want. Bullets and no pain for a while. No pain of any kind. Now it wasn't the puzzle that enticed House. Now the street possessed everything that he craved.

Wilson was loathe to let House go but there was nothing that he could say or offer that would make him want to stay, not with Gun and its pain-free whole souled if temporary ecstacy in the offering. What Gun granted would ultimately cost House far more than the bills he held in his hand. Wilson stepped forward and quickly embraced House before he had the chance to flee. He kissed Houses' dirty, unshaven cheek and then let him go.

"If you need anything else from me - anything _ever -_ come here. Any time of day or night_. Any _time, you hear me?"

House stepped back, reaffirming the space between himself and the world that had thrown him out. He nodded. "I know."

XXX

_"And then he was gone again."_

_"How long did he have to live do you think, at that point?" Over the course of that afternoon, listening to Doc's narration of what had happened to his best friend, Maria felt the question of Doctor Houses' guilt or innocense was no longer paramount. What had happened to the __**man**__ had come to the forefront of her thoughts. _

_"I couldn't stand watching him just walk out of my life again. So I followed him. I got in my car, waited until he was at the end of the street and followed him. I had to at least know where he was staying. Without that I didn't think I could have gone to sleep that night. Not with the thought of him out there somewhere, maybe passed out in an alley or lying on a park bench. . . ." Old Doc' shook his head as thought to dispel the image._

_"Where did he go?"_

_Old Doc' looked at her. "To hell, Sweetie. Greg House walked home to hell."_

XXX

Wilson followed House to the place he would have feared in his nightmares if he had known of it. It was a ramshackle old house left standing between two modern ten story condo blocks. It was one of the last dumps marked for destruction once the investment companies had settled an acceptable price on the absent landlord. Wilson imagined the landlord squatting luxuriously in his twenty room mansion on the Italian Riviera, sipping wine with no thought to his good friend who used to be a doctor but was now a man in a free fall to a terrible death.

"Fucker!" Wilson shouted at the imagined landlord because he had no one else to shout at. No one and nothing was within reach to blame for his friends situation or the awful place he called home.

This house wasn't even a low rental dump, it was a known flop of drugs and prostitution. Wilson knew the types that lived there. He knew of them. This house wasn't far from where he had last seen his brother, this house into which his friend Gregory walked.

Wilson had no idea what to do. He had expected a tiny, squalid motel room or cheap basement suite. Not this place. But he had to know.

XXX

"It's four hundred now."

Bud's cigar smelling breath told him. House counted out the money Wilson had given him. Three hundred, forty dollars. "This is all I got." He offered the money to Bud, his - everyone's - Gun dealer.

"I can't give you an advance." Bud smiled through the smoke and his tar stained teeth, knowing how lame his counter-offer was. "But I got some regular stuff I can let you have. Cheap. Two hits for three hundred." He knew it would be refused.

"I can't use regular and you know it."

Bud knew it. He also liked Scruff-man, in one particular way. "That's my offer, take it or leave it, unless you wanna pay me the rest some other way?"

House didn't but Gun was calling him, filling his head with its incessant rolling of the chamber. His body added to the internal din, fairly screaming at him with need. "Fine."

Bud lead House to his private bedroom that he kept for his own purposes. Not for sleeping, Bud did that in a very nice suburban House miles and squeaky clean, good neighbor miles from there.

"When was the last time you ate?" Bud asked not out of concern for his customers health.

"Couple of days." Scruff-man muttered.

"Good, 'cause I don't want any surprises."

House bent over the single sagging mattress and Bud unzipped the fly below his substantial belly, mounting him with no warning or subtlety. House couldn't help but gasp at the pain and clutch at the beds' dirty quilt. Silently he cursed Bud with every thrust, enduring the hated man with the knowledge that at the end of it he would have his bullet and Bud, his pain and everything else would disappear for a while.

For almost a day. One painless day out of the world was worth two shitty days in. Bud thrust and moaned indelicately, shooting, at last, his release into the condom he had rolled onto his less than impressive dick.

_As_ a dick, he was impressive in every way.

-

-

-

Wilson nudged open the unlocked door. It looked like it had been kicked in many times and any locks had long since been removed or left to dangle, broken and useless.

The place was quiet and for that he heaved a sigh of relief. Such a place he had seen before - once - a place not unlike this but not as bad. This place frightened him a little. Who he might encounter frighted him more.

Then he heard soft, rhythmic creaking noises from up the stairs and a mans' groan and pant for air. Then voices. One, he was sure, sounded like House.

The other, "Ah, that's better." Wilson thought he heard.

Wilson reached the top of the stairs just a fat, jolly faced man exited a shabby looking bedroom. At seeing him the jolly face quickly turned mean. "Who the hell are you?"

Wilson felt the fear return. Stupid of him that he had not thought he might not be safe or be welcomed in such a place. It was probably someones' private property - if it could be called such. "Um-"

Wilson glanced back into the bedroom when his eye caught movement.

House was there.

House, standing there, pulling up his underwear and jeans, fumbling with the broken fly that only did half way up. The odor of bodies and semen reached Wilsons' nostrils and it was suddenly clear what had been going on in the bedroom. The sound of soft groaning and the panting was made evident. Wilson felt his stomach lurch.

House felt eyes on him and turned his head to see Wilsons' eyes filled with anguish.

Without thinking, Wilson entered the room and grabbed Houses' shoulders. "House - my god - what are you doing? You, and, and that . . ._guy_?? Are you, are you-"

House pushed passed as though Wilson was not standing right in front of him. House instead followed fat, jolly-mean man into the hallway. "Bud. I want my hit."

Bud turned to answer House and Wilson was halted by the look of fury in the mans' face. "If you know what's good for you and your "friend", you'll get him out of here."

"I will." House acceded. Quickly. Without argument. "He'll go, he'll go, but not before you pay up."

Bud drew a small plastic bag from his pants pocket. "Here." He placed it in Houses' hand and said with mocking glee, "Enjoy."

Wilson watched the exchange with a sinking heart. House had a look in his eyes of a starved, half crazed animal and the tiny plastic baggie in his hand a fresh kill.

House grabbed Wilson by the coat sleeve and steered him back into the trash littered bed room. Wilsons' polished leather shoes stumbled, kicking greasy pizza boxes and crushed drink cartons out of their way.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

Wilson was taken aback by Houses' anger. "I wanted to be sure you were safe. I-"

"-I'm fine, Wilson. Go home."

Wilson stared at House who had become a stranger. "Fine?? You're on _Gun_. You're living in a _drug_ den. You just let a man-"

"-It's none of your business." House ground out between clenched teeth and pushed Wilson toward the door. "Go home. Leave me alone."

Wilson spun around. He saw the baggie clutched protectively in Houses' left hand. While House tried to maneuver Wilson to the door with his right - no easy task given the cane, it was slow going. It was a cane Wilson had never seen, more of a walking stick than a cane proper.

With a deft movement, Wilson snatched the baggie from Houses' grip, earning him a look of horror and then fury from his old friend. "Give it back!"

"No. Not until you agree to come home with me."

"Give it back Wilson." House acted like he had not heard him, his eyes never leaving his precious item - the ever so tiny amount of white powder he had earned by dropping his pants to an ugly man who hated him.

Wilson juggled the baggie from one hand to the other, each time just keeping it from Houses' greedy clutches. "Hand it over." House shouted. "_Give it to me_!"

Wilson could see it was a dangerous game he was playing. The House he once knew forced off Vicodin had turned paranoid and angry at everyone and everything. This House held the face of a man believing he would die without the tiny white bag of powder. That countenance was rapidly morphing into the expression of a man who would kill to get it back.

Wilson had to diffuse him immediately. He shouted "HOUSE!" and wrapped his strong arms around Houses' shaking ones, holding him in place until House was pouring with sweat from the effort to free himself and get back his precious powder.

Wilson was relentless and held on until House collapsed against the wall. Wilson let House fall gently to the floor, all the while keeping his arms around him. He held him there, still as the stale, heavy air until House slumped in defeat. House said in a weak whisper, like a child, "Please give it back to me."

Wilson hugged him still, not letting go. "I will." He assured him. "I will."

House didn't believe him. "I _need_ it."

"I know." Wilson rubbed a gentle hand across Houses' thinning hair. "I know." He sighed heavily with the weight of his knowledge. Here or the street or with him, House was going to die. "Please come home with me. I promise you'll have whatever you need. Even this stuff. I promise. _Please_ come home."

Wilson released his arms but not all the way, he kept his hands on Houses' upper arms, to reassure himself as much as House. Then he held out the tiny baggie of hard-won powder.

House took it with trembling fingers, clutching his dirty fist around it. He started to cry. "I don't want to."

Wilson nodded. He had expected that. "Why? Why live here if you don't have to?"

House looked up at him and for the first time in many years Wilson saw that same expression he had seen on Houses' face during the time of Tritter (simpler, easier times by comparison) when House had begged Wilson at the hospital to give him Vicodin. To give him relief from his pain, to give him anything to stop the agony.

But this agony - this pain - could not be stopped. Not by any drug or treatment program or counsel or love. Not by anything.

"I don't want to be reminded of what I had." House said, his words nearly inaudible.

Wilson realized House had been trying to protect him from this. This is why House had not come home or stopped by or even let himself be cared about - to protect Wilson from the knowledge of what House had been reduced to. House had kept himself apart so Wilson could still have those good life things and keep them untainted by the truth of Gun and a House who sold himself for a hit. House had tried to keep the ugly truth hidden so Wilson could remain free from the stink of his Gun-addicts' life.

Wilson touched Houses' hair again as House stared down at the only thing that mattered. Wilson knew House was waiting for him to leave so he could shoot up and also leave, but by a very different route.

"I love you." Wilson said to him quietly so Jolly, Ugly, Mean man would not hear the tender moment between one human being and another. "I love you. I don't care about this place, or what you've had to do or about this." He gestured to the baggie. "I don't care about any of that. I care about - only about - _you_. Please don't ever forget that."

House nodded but did not look up. Wilson had no idea if his head was heavy with shame or just the need to eat the bullet. Wilson kissed his hair. "When you're ready to - come home."

He stood and walked out, leaving House to do what he wanted to do, what he needed - had no choice but - to do.

House heated the water, added the Gun, drew up the magic bullet into a hype' and injected himself intra-muscularly.

His body didn't thank him. His mind didn't offer words of condolences over what he'd subjected himself in order to win the prize. All his body said was what House himself felt. A reward of sensation. . .

_At last, at last . . . _

As House cruised away on a pain free ocean he remembered words from a man who said he cared. Unlikely words. Words that no one had applied to him for a long, long time. Something he tried to accept as having meaning for himself: _"I love you."_

He wouldn't forget.

XXX

Part V ASAP!


	5. Chapter 5

RETROSPECT

Part V

By GeeLady

Summary: A last case, a last breath, a last redemption. Wilson looks back and sets things right. (This is not a House's Head/Wilson's Heart related fic', it's something else altogether). Set POST Season 5 or 6 or 7 (or whatever number proves to be the final season).

Pairing: H/W slash _implied_.

Rating: NC-17. **M**ature. Language. Rape. Violence. Drug abuse.

WARNING! **PRIMARY CHARACTER DEATH **- that means, yes, Gregory House! But please try it out anyway.

Note: Some of the medical terminology and situations are _**made up. **_Some of this story is set five years from now and some forty years from now, so I'm allowing myself the space to be creative in what I think might _someday_ be.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

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"Lie still!" Bud snarled in his ear, and wrenched his hands up behind his back. "Stiff me for junk huh? Think you got a _credit_ account with Bud, Scruff-man? I 'aint running no fucking _bank_."

Buds' Gun victim struggled vainly to free his arms, but he was weak from nearly a year of Gun use and squirmed helplessly. Bud twisted the thumb of the man he called Scruff up against the small of his back. He pushed the thumb into an unnatural bend until he heard a muffled, satisfying _snap!_ Scruff-man yelled out and Bud clamped one meaty paw over his mouth. "I owe these people for that shit. You hear me? I owe them money for _you_. And, fucking useless waste of a human that you are, you're gonna pay 'em back for me." Bud ignored the cry of pain as he twisted Scruff-mans' broken thumb around, grinding broken cartilage and bone against the another.

"They've got certain appetites. You understand? More interesting than mine, and what you owe me they're going to take outta' your ass." Bud let him go and called his company from the adjoining room to Scruff-man's private, needle littered bedroom.

"He's all yours." Bud looked down at Scruff-man and kicked him hard in the leg he knew would hurt the most. "Behave for them. I've done shit loads more than break thumbs for a missed payment."

Scruff-man understood. His broken thumb and throbbing leg convinced him that Bud was serious.

Pain spoke clearly as it always had.

XXX

_"So Gregory House started prostituting himself for the Gun."_

_"Gun made people do things to themselves and things for others nothing else would. I don't know how long he had been at it, but yeah, he was selling himself for the drug. I know he had to have been on Gun for several months at least if he was that far gone."_

_"Why would a doctor take a substance so dangerous and deadly if-"_

_"No one knowingly starts on Gun, honey. The dealers cut it into the regular stuff to hook their clients. They don't __**tell **__the junkies they're about to flush their lives away. A dealer with a Gun client had a life-long addict. The dealer could plan his retirement and put a pool in the back yard on a few Gun addict backs. House probably got it in prison and before he knew what was happening . . . _

_"And remember - Gun was new. Really new. Not even the medical community was entirely aware of its existence or the danger it represented."_

_"So what happened to the kid?"_

_"He died." He said as though she had forgotten. _

_"So House was right about the diagnosis but wrong in his actions."_

_Doc' Wilson smiled to himself. "The way you say it, it sounds like something extraordinary. But that was nothing new with House. He was an unusual man working in a one of a kind department helping people who had no where left to go. The man and the place were the definitions of extraordinary. That's why people were sent to him. Ordinary had failed them."_

_"And what finally happened to Doctor House?"_

_An grey haired nurses' assistant brought Doc's dinner in. His usual young girl must have gone home, Maria thought. Doc' lifted the heat lid and eyed the meatloaf with suspicion. "Any pork in it?"_

_"No, Doctor Wilson, just beef." The patient woman answered and left._

_When she'd gone, he smelled it. "Smells like there's pork in it. I only like all beef meatloaf." But he picked up his fork anyway and hacked off a piece, chewing it contentedly. "I got a phone call - well, Lisa Cuddy got a call from the local precinct. They said a man named Gregory House was asking for me. You should have seen Cuddys' face. Pale and wide eyed as a ghosts. I told her to keep it under wraps. She already knew about house and the Gun and all the shit that had happened to him. But Lisa was a good sort. She kept her mouth shut. _

_"So off I went to the police station and there was House looking like one big bruise - all bloody. He'd been brutally raped and beaten."_

_Doc' ignored Marias' gasp and chewed his food, speaking through a mouth-full. She realized that Doctor Wilson had undoubtedly seen much worse during his career as an oncologist. blood and bruises would seem almost innocuous to him._

_"The officer explained that an old couple out for a walk had found him in a dumpster and called nine-one-one. The police arrived before the ambulance and House refused a ride to the hospital. The officer insisted, House resisted and well, you know how that usually ends. House was arrested instead and placed in a holding cell."_

_"He asked for you?"_

_Doc' nodded. "The officer said he had no desire to charge House with Resisting and hoped I might shed some light on the situation. I told him what I knew and that I'd be glad to take responsibility for him. Then there was the matter of bail. Five thousand dollars later, House and I walked out of the jail."_

_"I'm glad he had you."_

_"I think he was glad too, only Gun had been a closer companion that previous year. The next thing I knew he was limping away on his cane as fast as he could go."_

_"Where was he going?"_

_"After Gun. What else?"_

_"Did you chase him?"_

_"No."_

_"Why not? He might have been out of his mind in pain or just stoned . . ."_

_He shrugged. "Maybe. Or he just wasn't ready to come home."_

_Doc' started on his mashed potatoes, adding a liberal amount of salt and butter. "Julia in the kitchen gives me all the salt and butter I want. She's a sweet, plump little thing that figures if I can survive two heart attacks, a stroke and congestive pulmonary failure, a little cow fat can't do me much more harm."_

_Maria was inclined to agree. She recalled her own grandmothers' diet of soggy vegetables, lean turkey stew, orange juice and hot water and felt a certain satisfaction that here Doc' Wilson was allowed to enjoy his food. For certain it was one of the few pleasures left to him. _

_"House disappeared again for about two weeks, then one day he came into the clinic. He just showed up out of the blue. No warning. Cuddy didn't even know who he was, he looked so bad. She didn't recognize him and lead him to an exam room. She even called for me when he asked. I think then she might have realized it was House."_

_"Did you tell her?"_

_"No. I wanted him to feel he could come there to find me any time. If anyone knew who he was, they might want to fuss or something - drive him off. And I wanted him to be able to keep his privacy; his dignity. But Cuddy didn't make a fuss. She had known him almost as well as I did and understood he would not want to be stared at. But she was so upset. She went to her office and cried I think."_

_"How was he?" _

_Doc' dropped his fork and swallowed. "He must have weighed maybe a hundred fifty pounds. He-" Docs' hand trembled over the fork. To Maria it seemed he was embarrassed to be eating while talking about a man who had all but starved to death. "He hadn't eaten in a week. He was the worst I'd ever seen him in my whole life. First he asked me if he could have some morphine. That's how I knew that he had run out of ways to get Gun and the pain had begun to take its toll on his system. He shook like a leaf in the wind."_

_This Gregory House who had consumed half her day suddenly seemed like a man she ought to care about. Somehow she could almost picture him, could almost hear his voice in the room. He felt real enough now for her to say, "I'm sorry."_

_Doc seemed pleased with her words but continued his narration without pause. "I got him the morphine. I couldn't think of a thing to say to him. I'd tried - so many times - I'd tried to get him to come home. I figured he wasn't ever going to and I had given up asking."_

_Doc' sipped his tea and placed the cup back on the saucer. "He looked at me with those eyes of his and, you know, Gregory House had telling eyes - beautiful eyes - the bluest anywhere - and __**honest**__. He'd tell you the truth whether it hurt you or not. I'd come to value that about him almost above all else. It's so rare now-a-days to know someone who respects you enough not to coat everything in sugar and spice. In that way House was . . .refreshing."_

_Doc' Wilson looked directly at Maria, staring into her eyes with his old man browns, like Gregory was right in the room with them - or somewhere inside Wilson himself. "Greg looked at me with those eyes that had never lost their blue - never changed - and whispered so politely__**: "**_I'd like to come home now."_ He said, "_I'm ready."."

_Docs' eyes watered again. "I knew that meant that the end wasn't far off. He'd reached the point, physically, where the Gun wasn't doing much good. See eventually the body gets so . . .utterly wrecked . . from Gun, no amount of the damn drug will bring the relief it once did. Then the pain begins and the descent into agony and death._

_"My friend, . . ." Doc' said, a tear escaping again. . . . _

_Incredible how emotionally just the memory of this man House affected the old fellow. Maria wondered at it. She wondered at it more and more, and imagined that knowing Gregory House privately must have been something. House must have been something indeed. _

_". . .was coming home to die." Doc' looked at her the way the very old often do - that certain glance one who is close to death gives to one far away from it. "Have you ever seen someone die, sweetie?" He asked. "Ever watched as the life drained from his body, the light fading from his eyes? Ever been as close to a dying friend as you are to me right now?"_

_Maria felt a bit uncomfortable under his scrutiny. _

_The old were longer on the earth than the young. Docs' heart had beat four and one half billion times since his birth. Over a billion times had his lungs had taken in then expelled air. He had seen the sun rise and set thirty-two thousand, eight hundred and fifty times, witnessed three hundred and sixty changes of the seasons, helped thousands of people survive cancer and watched helplessly as thousands of others died. Maria respected that the old man had something to say about life but she resented a little the assumption that, just because she was young, she knew nothing about it at all. "I went to a funeral once. My aunt died when I was seven. My mother made me look at her in the coffin."_

_"Did you love your aunt more than anything or anyone else in the world? Was she somehow the part of you that was most alive? Did you feel your soul beg God to keep her? Do you now think of her everyday as though no time had passed at all? Do you ache for her?"_

_Maria didn't answer. Of course her aunt had been none of those things to her. She had only been seven years old. Her aunt had died of cancer at age thirty-three; her mothers' sister whom she had hardly known._

_Doc' sensed her quiet disapproval of the questions. "I'm not trying to make a comparison or measure your heart against mine. I'm saying that my friend was so very much to me that to this day, to this minute, I miss him that much. The missing, the hole in my life after he went away is as large as it ever was. I don't know why House meant that much to me. If you asked me now to explain it, I couldn't. But I know I loved him. He was dear to me. Dearer than a mate or a father or any gift you could offer."_

_"Were you lovers?"_

_He slapped the dinner tray in delight and his cold cup of tea jumped in its saucer. "Hah! I wondered when you'd come around to that. Ha-ha!" _

_"It's because you talk like you lost a lover, not a friend."_

_"What's the difference?"_

_"I'm not sure I understand."_

_"Loving a friend, befriending a lover - a lover __**is **__a friend isn't he?" He wiped up the spilled tea with a paper napkin. "I'm going to answer that by not giving you an answer."_

_"You're being cryptic, Doctor Wilson."_

_"A yes or no would mean nothing. And it would only incite you to add a few silly paragraphs about the gay doctors or further spread the rumors that circulated for years about me and House. Something to juicy up the story for your readers. Sell more papers."_

_But Maria was not one to give up so easily. "So you're saying you weren't lovers?"_

_"I'm saying it wouldn't have made a hairs difference! Sleeping with Gregory House could not have made me love him more. Not sleeping with him wouldn't have taken away one speck of my feeling for him. So it's irrelevant. If it's a story about sex or a sordid affair you were looking for, there's plenty of those down the hall."_

_She seriously doubted it. "How were those last few months for him?"_

_"I brought him home and gave him my bedroom and moved to the guest one. My boss, the Dean Cuddy, she gave me six months leave to stay home with him. I left instructions at the hospital that no one was to visit him. That's the way he wanted it and by god that's the way it was going to be. Greg did not want people staring at him in pity. So I rented videos, we played cards, we drank beer and tried to laugh about the things we used to."_

_"And the pain? The Gun?"_

_"The Gun I injected into his poor body twice a day, and, near the end morphine injections in between. It wasn't an easy task - balancing the deadly poison that was killing him but which without he would have died sooner and also regulating the morphine to give him relief from the pain when the Gun wore off. In between the two, he would have about an hour twice a day where he would feel neither the craving for the Gun or the need for the morphine. Those were the hours he was most like the House I had known. Those were the hours when both of us could forget what was happening._

_"He died when I least expected him to die. He was feeling well. But thin. So thin by then. Almost nothing left of subcutaneous fat, all bone and wasted muscle and sinew. For the previous three weeks he had been confined to a wheelchair and then to his bed. But we still watched the television and talked. I kept him fed on liquid proteins and nutrients. Even IV glucose. House lived longer than any previous Gun victim on record. Mind you, there were only three hundred or so._

_"One evening I heard him moaning from his bed. Much to my stupidity, my brilliant feeding program had extended his life so that he was around to experience the final stage of Morpheus Gun Degenerative Syndrome. "Morpheus" because of the god of dreams and sleep. Morphine puts a man to sleep, you see. Heroin puts him into a state of hallucinogenic sleep. And Gun of course puts a man to sleep forever._

_"But, yes, the final stage. Once Gun has destroyed a victims body, it attacks the last thing that feels - his nervous system. The nerves, you understand? A pain with which Doctor House was intimately familiar. But these were all of the nerves through out his entire body collectively breaking down, sloughing their myelin, shedding their protective coatings, fraying, dissolving._

_"Can you imagine the pain? Once I realized what was happening, I shot him up with morphine - as much as I dared. It wasn't enough. He was suffering more than any man should be asked to. I held him in my arms but what good did it do? - Nothing! He was begging me. Begging - pleading with me - to dose him. Understand, dear, that House was asking me to help him die."_

_"Did you?"_

_Doc' nodded, his tears escaped now and flowed freely. He nodded vigorously, the guilt fresh as the day it was born. "Yes. Yes, I killed my best friend. I ran to the bathroom and got the morphine. Filled the plunger to its limit. If I could stop it, he was going to suffer no more on this lousy planet. But when I got back, he wasn't yelling anymore. He was lying there looking up at the sky through the window and smiling."_

_"Smiling?"_

_Doc' nodded again, a small smile on his own tear-ed up face at the vibrant memory. "Smiling. I asked him, . . ." Old Doc' Wilson looked down at his upturned hands in his lap as though Gregory House were there laying in his arms as plain as day while Maria watched Wilson act out the final moments of his poor friends' life. It was a play performed just for her of a tragedy no one had ever known about until now. _

_Doc spoke to his friend. "I said: "_Why are you smiling House?""

_Doc' looked up to the stained ceiling tiles, now playing the part of his dear departed friend. "_Wilson." _he said, "_Jimmy. My leg doesn't hurt. I can't feel the pain anymore."

_Doc' looked at his hands, gently cradling a man who had not lived for forty-five years, but still holding him in his wrinkled, ninety year old arms. "_That's good. I'm so glad." _I said. _

"I don't feel anything." _House said to me, and smiling like not knowing where his body was anymore was a gift." Doc' cried freely. "Imagine being grateful for that? Imagine deriving even one particle of joy that you were adrift in your own mind, your body moments from death? How can anyone see such an event and be the same man after?"_

_Maria did not think she would have been able to look. "I'm glad he was out of pain."_

_"Yes." Doc' carelessly wiped at his eyes, the salty stuff marking trails down his dry cheek skin. "But I was afraid it would come back. So I wrapped my hands around him and kissed his forehead and said: "_Do you want to sleep for a while_?"_

_"He nodded at me. I don't think his tongue could form words anymore. The Gun had taken it." Doc' clasped his hands together in his lap. The ghost of Gregory House had disappeared from him once more and he was alone in the room with her. "I said: "_I'll see you soon. I'll see you very soon." _And I pushed the plunger home. A few seconds later, he stopped breathing and I took my stethoscope and listened to his heart. Then it stopped . . ." _

_Doc' trailed off. Maria felt her own eyes tearing up but disciplined them to behave. _

_"He died at eleven-ten PM, June sixth, two thousand thirteen."_

_"I'm so sorry."_

_Doc' seemed to recover his composure quite quickly. "Yes. He's been gone a long time now."_

_"Where is he buried?"_

_"He was cremated. Like everyone has to be now."_

_"Yes. But which State Yard?"_

_"He's not. I didn't have the heart to let him be put in the ground. I sprinkled some of his ashes on the grounds of the hospital - over by the park, near a picnic table he used to sit on all the time, down by the river - and I keep the rest with me." _

_Maria was surprised. "You know that's illegal?"_

_"Gregory House was family. I keep my family with me. The State be damned." Doc's eyes fell upon the purple vase and Marias' gaze followed. _

_"He's there? That's his urn?" She asked. A gaudy - an ugly choice._

_"So what if it is!? Are you going to run off and tattle to the proper authorities?"_

_"But the laws of identity theft, genetic tampering. Keeping a loved ones ashes is-"_

_"-I don't care."_

_"I won't tell anyone but eventually someone will figure it out and they'll confiscate it."_

_"Let them! I'll probably be dead by then anyway." _

_"Can you tell me one thing. How did you know House was right? About the kid Jason Parks? You've been a little vague on the details. Like the Medical Examiner for instance. He or she must have testified. What were the findings of the autopsy?"_

_"Parks tried to block the autopsy report. Interesting, that. Why would he do that do you suppose? Wouldn't knowing that the findings supported the prosecutions' case be welcomed by Parks Senior? I didn't clue in at the time what was happening. I was so busy trying to deal with the fact that House was about to lose his whole practice and his freedom. I think we were all in a daze. We figured, well, Houses' attorney knew all about everything to do with the case, right? What did we know? We were doctors, not lawyers." _

_"The autopsy was blocked then?"_

_"No. The court had the sense to see that a mans' whole life was at stake and wisely blocked Parks attempt to block the autopsy. He didn't have a hope in blocking such crucial evidence anyway and we were all frankly startled at the mans' hubris. What we didn't suspect was Parks wasn't trying to block the autopsy at all, just delay it's arrival into the maze that was the justice system."_

_Maria was startled now. "You mean Parks had the report intercepted? Why would he do that?"_

_"Why indeed? You see, the M.E. was out of the country just before the trial but his report was submitted as testimony on its own merit. Interestingly it said nothing about Houses' theory of Pernicious Anemia and Cholera."_

_"What? I thought you said - you assured me you knew-"_

_"Yes, yes. So you understand my puzzlement at the time. The report, from what it didn't mention, supported the prosecutions' statement that Jason Parks had suffered Leukemia and died as result of Doctor Houses' ill-advised treatment and persistent mis-diagnosis."_

_"So was House right or wrong?"_

_"I'm getting to that. The M.E.'s report also failed to mention the presence of the injection House had given the kid to treat him for the suspected P.A and Cholera. that information should have been present on the drug and tox' screen of the report."_

_"The M.E. screwed up?"_

_"That's what we thought. Or House was wrong. We didn't know which it was."_

_"Why were the drug and tox screens omitted?"_

_"They weren't, since you asked, they were deleted! They were removed. Parks had dump trucks full of money to spread around. He was a member of the City council, a friend of the Judge, and an all around pillar in the community. He intercepted the report and read it on his own before it made it to the courts. The drug and tox screens confirmed the presence of Cholera and prochloroperazine. The M.E. also stated his belief that Jason Parks suffered from Pernicious Anemia. See, the M.E. was never told any of Jason Parks medical history - to better keep him objective."_

_"Parks hid the fact that House was right?"_

_"His son was dead. He was in the middle of a court battle to punish the man he had publically accused of malpractice. Parks senior had hung his ass out on the line and if that report confirmed that he was wrong on all counts, well, I guess his carefully tailored reputation could not weather such a blow. So he let House take the fall for something he didn't do. He didn't kill that kid - he wouldn't have either. House went to jail for being right. And what was Parks going to do - admit he tampered with trial evidence? Not hardly."_

_"That's quite a theory. But how do you know for sure Parks tampered with the M.E.'s report?"_

_"About a year after House died, the M.E. came home from his sojourn and I looked him up. I asked him if he recalled the case and asked him all about it. He remembered it clearly because of how puzzled he was over it. You see, he had submitted the drug and tox screens just like he was supposed to. Then just prior to trial, he left the country. The prosecution of course allowed it for it was in their best interests. Parks lawyer didn't know that of course, but Parks was paying his huge salary and he did what his client told him."_

_"What about the defense lawyer. Why didn't he insist that the M.E. be made to testify personally?"  
_

_"Because he was a court appointed idiot of a greenhorn who earned his salary whether he won or lost. And he had no compelling reason to think that the prosecution had set his client up for a sure fall."_

_"Where did he go anyway? Seems weird the Medical Examiner would be off just as a trial in which he was a crucial part was about to begin."_

_"Weird is the word. He said he had gone to work for a year in England for a pharmaceutical company called "Shelton-Miller-Shelton". Shelton was Parks' wifes' maiden name. Parks had married into her very wealthy family and made the running of the company his own. The M.E. had been sent away by her father to work for him away from all the muss and fuss of the trial. Parks' wife had no idea that her son died of Pernicious Anemia and Cholera. To her death, she believed Doctor Houses', not her husbands, actions had brought about the death of her only son."_

_"But why would Parks even want to intercept the autopsy report if he was so sure House was wrong?"_

_"He was sure I think, but he was a calculating man. He had married a woman fifteen years his senior, been granted the presidency in a multi-billion dollar institution. He wanted to make certain that the prosecution would have the upper hand all the way - that he was in the right. But when he found out he had been wrong. That we had all been wrong . . .imagine what his wife's reaction would have been?" _

_"He couldn't risk losing the millions; the life-style; the position. . ." Maria reasoned. "But wouldn't the court have suspected something was amiss when the drug and tox screen went missing?"_

_"They weren't "missing". If a drug or tox' screen supplied negative results, those negative results are not submitted along with the autopsy. No drug or tox screen means the M.E. had obtained negative results for both. No drug-tox report meant no drugs, no toxins and so no need to submit any statement stating so."_

_"That's ridiculous."_

_"That was the law at the time. It was new. Some bean-counters idea to speed up the court system I guess." _

_"So all this means Doctor House had no proof what-so-ever that he had actually helped the kid. And the prosecution had all the reasons it needed to support the autopsy' findings that Jason Parks had leukemia. So no drug or tox' information made the prosecutions' case stronger."_

_"Bingo! Don't let it ever be said that a lack of an answer tells us nothing."_

_"And by that same line of reasoning the defense had no basis for contending that House didn't harm that kid."_

_"Right again. The M.E. was puzzled. He said to me: "_Why did the attending stop the treatments for the kid's cholera? And why the hell wasn't he being treated for his anemia?" _You see? The M.E. had done a drug and tox' screen and had found evidence for both conditions. House was right. The kid didn't have leukemia. Two more injections and regular B12 treatments would have saved his life. Cured him."_

_"But you still didn't kill Doctor House. Not really. It wasn't your fault that he was tried or found guilty. You said yourself you had no idea what Parks was up to."_

_"No. But we could have looked into Jasons' case ourselves. We could have checked Houses' theory out. We could have gone to the kid and asked: "Did you and your parents eat raw clams or oysters while you were in Newfoundland two months ago?" _

_"We didn't do anything to help House. We assumed Jasons' physicians' original diagnosis was correct. Therefore all of the following doctors who attended to his case thought that too. Their job was to treat him for Leukemia and that's exactly what they did. Doctors are not in the habit of questioning the diagnoses of other physicians. Makes for very bad blood." _

_Doc' could see Maria was still unconvinced that they had any bearing on Houses' fate so Doc' held out pinched fingers to her, as though he held the reasons in his hands for her to see clearly. "We didn't question the kids' diagnosis of leukemia, even though the kid was bleeding from his bowels and showing symptoms that something else going on. But House did! The kid was brought to House because his treatment for Leukemia wasn't doing the job and because he was bleeding and bloating and wasting away from Diarrhea. _

_"Jason was brought to House because House possessed a genius for figuring out medical mysteries. They had a mystery. House solved mysteries. And then we all gathered around and presumed to know better."_

_"So one mistake was compounded."_

_"Yes. Jasons' family doctor suspected leukemia. He was sent to an oncologist who had a single test done that confirmed it. But that test was wrong. It does happen, you know. More often than people realize."_

_"No one ever questioned the leukemia."_

_"No one except House."_

_"But hadn't he first suspected that other thing? The Micro-Inclusion Whatever?" _

_"Sure. House was trying to find the underlying cause of the kids' new symptoms. He was wrong about the MID. So what? Jasons' first doctor was wrong and he was never prosecuted for putting that kid through years of agony. That's how puzzles are solved. You try something. If it doesn't work, you try something else. But House wasn't taking shots in the dark, he was testing his diagnoses. He would have found out the MID was incorrect and gone on to something else."_

_"But it might have harmed the kid more."_

_"The kid was dying! How much more harmful is that? Our mistake was refusing to believe that the leukemia could be a mistake. The man's whose business it was to discover mis-diagnoses we prevented from diagnosing his patient."_

_"Parks used his money contributions to the hospital to manipulate events."_

_"And we let him. Cuddy choose funds over Jason Parks life and over Houses' career and freedom. We didn't even ask the kid: "Hey- did you eat raw clams?" How hard would that have been? We may not have ferried House to court or locked the cell door but we sure as hell helped paddle the canoe. _

_"We stopped House from doing what he did best - what he was born to do - solve the puzzle. Save the person. One and the same."_

_Maria thought about it. One simple question might have prevented all of it. Maybe._

_Doc' added. "When Parks' son died, Parks withdrew the funds to the hospital. Cuddy lost nearly a quarter of her budget overnight. Two departments were shut down. Obstetrics and - no surprise - Diagnostics." _

_Maria capped her pen, thoughtful. Parks would have of course. Why contribute any money to a hospital that kills your only son? That is how it would have to look for posterity. That is how Parks needed it to appear to save his place in the world. "What kind of a man was House personally? You've spoken a lot about his skills as a doctor, but what about him? That was what you wanted. Occasionally you've spoken of him as though he were some kind of saint or hero."_

_"House was no saint. But he was the best doctor I have ever known. And he was my friend." Doc' sat up straighter when a thought came to him. "Would you like to see his picture?"_

_"Yes." She had seen the photo used in the local papers during the trial. A typical drivers' license or ID photograph showing a middle-aged, scowling man._

_Doc' Wilson went to his wood chest in the corner by his bed and, using a small key, turned it in the lock. He opened and fumbled around inside until he found an old-fashioned photo album. The kind with the yellow, faded sticky pages covered in plastic. Doc' found and removed a much thumbed two by three inch photo of himself and his friend, handing it to her with an almost comical reverence._

_Maria accepted it, holding it carefully by its edges. For the first time, she looked at the subject of her afternoon interview - the man Greg House who had been so wrongly accused and ruined. The photo was from some function at the hospital. Years and years ago. A young Doctor Wilson was sitting at a table crowded with drinking glasses. Yes, she had been right, old Doc' had been a very good looking man with melting pot eyes. Small wonder he had walked six different women down the aisle._

_And there on his right sat his friend, Greg House. An older man - which surprised her. The photo in the newspaper archives had been faded and indistinct and from Doc' Wilsons' descriptions, she had imagined a younger, impulsive man, someone given to quick, ill-considered actions. But here was a man ten years Wilsons' senior. A seasoned doctor of skill and training._

_Here also was a handsome man with the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Eyes that laughed and smiled at his friend Wilson. A joke or comment had been said in which House had delighted. Greg House possessed a face alive with emotions and intelligence._

_She found it difficult to tear her eyes away from the face that had once been so living and real; content in his surroundings; satisfied in life. A man of unusual actions perhaps, a trifle reckless, but respected never-the-less. Cared about by someone. Valued._

_Loved by this old man of ninety who had not forgotten his friend for a moment, who had loved him and missed him every day._

_She handed the photo back and Doc' replaced it in the album. "Do you believe in heaven?" He asked her._

_"Um. I don't know."_

_"You mean you don't know whether it exists or whether you __**believe**__ it might or might not exist?"_

_"There is no direct evidence that it exists so I guess I don't believe in it." She watched his face gaze at the photo of Greg House under the yellow plastic. "Do you?"_

_"I let myself believe."_

_"Let yourself?"_

_He closed the album and put it away. "If there is no heaven or after-life I have missed my friend to no purpose. He has ceased to exist and I have the same fate. So what he did, everything he was, means nothing forever. No more life means my love for him was of no use or good. If there is no heaven I will never see my friend again, and I knew I could not live with that knowledge. _

_"For forty-five years I have remembered him each day; thought about him; missed him. Through all my marriages and work and vacations, and retirement years, every day I have fondly remembered him. I would not have been able to live those years well if I believed he was gone forever. So I allowed myself the freedom to believe that I will see him again. I needed to know then as now that I will see him again."_

_Maria thought it a most unusual way to gain comfort. "A sentiment I hope I someday share."_

_"House would call me a moron for believing it. But he's not here right now to argue the point."_

_"I am sorry for what happened to your friend."_

_"It's all dead and gone long ago. Now I wait. But I'm tired of waiting. I want to go now. I'm tired of this life and I want to go meet him and have a few drinks."_

_"I promise I'll write a good article. I'll tell them what you've told me. I'll tell them about the man, not just the doctor. We can't change the past, but maybe we can help his memory."_

_"You're a good girl."_

_She gathered up her recorder and note pad, shaking his hand. "Better hide that urn. A more law-abiding citizen than me might snitch on you."_

_Doc' Wilson chuckled appreciatively. "That sounded like something House would say."_

_Maria said goodbye and left his room._

_-_

_-_

_-_

_Old Doc' Wilson rolled his chair to the door of his room and watched her walk away down the hall. When he was sure she was gone, he closed the door and wheeled himself back to his wooden chest, glancing at the cheap purple vase on the shelf. If they came to take it away, he could not care less. In fact, he counted on them taking that one away. Their ridiculous law could be satisfied. _

_Doc' fished around inside his wood box and withdrew four items. A whiskey bottle, two shot glasses and a heavy square, block with a lid made of dark green marble. On one side was a silver plaque that read "Doctor Gregory House. April 18th, 1959 to June 6, 2013. Beloved friend."_

_Doc' Wilson poured out two shots of the burning amber liquid. One he set carefully beside the green urn just so they touched. The other he raised in a salute. "I'll be seeing you soon, Buddy. Real soon."_

_-_

_-_

_XXX_

_"Roger. Got a minute?"_

_Maria McLellans' boss and Senior Editor, a round man of no hair and good humor, looked up from his magazine. "Sure."_

_Maria walked into his office and sat in the chair opposite him, crossing her legs. She knew he liked her legs. "Um, about this House article . . ."_

_"Your Saturday feature?"_

_"Yeah. I think it's going to be better than either of us expected. There's some question of a cover-up."_

_"Splendid! A conspiracy's always better copy."_

_"Right. As an addition to the story, I'd like to apply for a Posthumous Character Pardon on behalf of Doctor House."_

_"Really? You think he was innocent?"_

_"I think he was keel-hauled. A character pardon would make a bang-up wrap. And from what Doc' Wilson told me, House is owed that much. The trial alone - "_

_"- Whatever you think, Maria. You've got good instincts with these things. Do what you need to. Just make sure it's all legal."_

_"It will be."_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_-_

_Maria McLellan, based on her interview and every fact she could scrape together on the matter, applied for a received a Posthumous Character Pardon for Doctor Gregory House. She dialed the Care Facility where Doc' Wilson lived, anxious to tell him the good news._

_"What? When?" Her heart sank. "I see." She swallowed a lump in her throat. "Where will he be interred? And which Crematorium is performing the cremation?" She wrote down the name. "Thank you."_

_She climbed in her car and broke every speed law to arrive before the perfunctory State-funded funeral. She stepped into the Funeral Parlor/Crematorium ill-dressed. She didn't care. Locating the manager, she stated her business and handed him five one hundred dollar bills. "I just want a tiny part. Just a few ounces. That's all."_

_The manager, not particular to silly laws either, pocketed the money and lead her to a small room. "He's right there." He pointed to a square grey metal urn. "You're in luck, it hasn't been sealed yet."_

_Maria withdrew a small brown paper bag and opened the urn. Inside were the ashes of Doctor James Wilson. Jimmy, good friend to Doctor House. She shook out about a third into the brown bag, folded it over and left._

_In the park, she searched for and located the picnic table. It was old, but had been constructed of thick beams so had well stood the test of time. _

_Her article she would end with the Posthumous Character Pardon on behalf of Doctor House. But this is how she would, away from the public eye, end their personal, private story. The tale of two men whose friendship had also stood the test of time, and who would find one another again, she hoped, somewhere. Somehow._

_Maria tipped up the bag and let the ashes drift in the tiny wind to the grass. Around the table they settled down forever. _

_"Have that drink, boys." They could be together again. _

_She imagined Wilson walking up to his friend in a place she did not know, and shaking his hand. She imagined a healthy Greg House nodding, maybe smiling at his friend, and them walking away discussing an old medical case or deciding which bar to go to. Maria heard them laughing on the wind._

_She let herself believe._

_XXX_

_**END**_

See the story _**Spermotacele and a Rubber Nose**_ for my take on the explanation behind Doctor Houses' testicle problem and his first meeting with James Wilson - Oncologist.


End file.
